South Africa has thus far remained coronavirus-free.

Whilst two South African citizens have tested positive for the virus, they were on a cruise ship in Japan.

Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize (above), has also indicated that we will be evacuating South Africans from Wuhan, following the outbreak.

Much has been made of how ready South Africa will be if (when) the virus arrives on our shores, and the government has done their best to set everyone’s mind at ease by answering a list of the most pressing questions doing the rounds at the moment. 

Cool. It looks like we’re prepared, good to go, nothing to stress about.

Unfortunately, the people answering those questions are obviously not the same people running the Department of Health’s Twitter account, because this rather unfortunate retweet appeared last night:

To be clear, that’s a joke, that has been retweeted by the South African Department of Health on their official Twitter account.

The concerns around stigmatisation and racism are real. You just need to take a scroll through TikTok to see how many people have used the virus as an excuse to publicly show off their prejudice against Chinese people.

The whole ‘body-bag ready’ thing, on the other hand, is the kind of cringeworthy dark humour that tends to crop up when folks are freaked out.

The person who made the joke can hardly believe what is happening:

Tweets like these don’t usually appear on official government accounts, because that kind of thing doesn’t inspire much confidence.

The retweet occurred last night, and as of the time of writing (close to 12 hours later), has not been rectified.

Obviously, South Africans were quick to reply, and most seem to see the humour in it.

More dark humour:

This guy clearly doesn’t know what’s going on, is wearing a ‘MAGA’ hat and has a body-bag in his car. He might be the scariest thing about this Twitter thread:

Finally, in a stunning case of irony, here’s the Department of Health’s second-last tweet:

To be safe, it’s probably not a good idea to get your coronavirus information from Twitter.

Use this World Health Organisation / Johns Hopkins map instead.