The South African government will begin consultations on a proposal to ease lockdown restrictions in most of the country to level 3 by the end of the month, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.

However, it envisions that parts of the country with a high concentration of Covid-19 infections will remain on level 4, he said.

“We will immediately begin a process of consultation with the relevant stakeholders on the proposal that by the end of May most of the country should be placed on alert level 3, but that those parts of the country with the highest rates of infection remain on level 4,” Ramaphosa said in a televised address.

Ramaphosa said the government would make further announcements after the completion of the consultations.

He also said that it would also “in the coming days” be announcing changes to level 4 regulations to lift restrictions on trade, e-commerce and exercise.

He has conceded that the government has faced questions as to whether its response to the coronavirus has shown too little regard for preserving people’s livelihoods.

“Our strategic approach has been based on saving lives and preserving livelihoods,” he said, after asserting that the lockdown had been a success.

Had the country not imposed stringent confinement measures in late March, Ramaphosa said, some 81,000 South Africans would by now have been infected with Covid-19, as opposed to the current number of 12, 074, and the death toll of 219, could have been eight times higher.

Ramaphosa did not heed persistent calls to provide details of the government’s current projection modelling.

Instead, he warned that international precedent had shown that “infections will inevitably rise as the lockdown measures are eased” and that the virus would remain a threat for some time to come.

“Our success in overcoming the coronavirus will ultimately be determined by the changes we make in our behaviour.

“We will need to re-organise workplaces, schools, universities, colleges and other public places to limit transmission. We will need to adapt to new ways of worshipping, socialising, exercising and meeting that minimise opportunities for the virus to spread.”

Ramaphosa said whether people respected the new measures would determine whether the sacrifices they had made in the past two months of restrictions and the advantages the health system had gained could be sustained.

“The transition to the next phase of the coronavirus response will in many ways be more difficult than the present one,” he said.

The president said the lockdown had allowed the health service to prepare nearly 25,000 additional beds available for quarantine and the government to source a substantial amount of personal protective equipment for health workers, as well as vital medical equipment and supplies.

It has allowed the screening of nine million people for Covid-19 and the testing of almost 370,000.

Turning to the economy, he said the state’s extraordinary R5 billion Covid-19 intervention and the rollout of relief funding through the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to the tune of R11 billion so far, would help to keep companies afloat and save “millions of jobs”.

He said two million employees from 160,000 have benefited from relief channeled through the UIF so far.

Reacting to the president’s delivery, leader of the official opposition, John Steenhuisen said the speech had seen Ramaphosa limp along with what was no longer a useful strategy and called on him to reopen the economy as a matter of urgency.

“President Ramaphosa delivered a speech but said very little. Essentially, he doubled down on what has been a tragically flawed approach that has wreaked catastrophic, unnecessary and possibly irreparable damage to our country,” the Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s), Steenhuisen said.

“South Africa’s economy and society must be opened up now, to save lives and livelihoods from all types of risks, not just Covid.

“We repeat our call for the national lockdown to end swiftly. It is not a rational strategy, and has not been so for weeks,” the DA leader said.

Source: ANA