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As we enter what some are calling the home stretch of our 35 days of national lockdown, there seems to be a general realisation that life will not return to normal as of May 1.

Many ministers have told us this already, with Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, saying last week that “we don’t know for sure that the lockdown will end on April 30. Even if it opens on April 30 we can’t open the floodgates.”

I reckon our government best reopen the sale of liquor and tobacco on May 1, because if they don’t they risk a full-scale revolt, but there are more important issues to deal with.

Yes, even more important than your Woolies roast chicken.

Physical distancing measures have bought our medical infrastructure time in the battle against COVID-19, but those measures are not sustainable beyond the end of this month.

People need to be able to earn money to feed their families, and the economy needs to be stimulated, whilst at the same time ensuring that the spread of the virus is mitigated.

GroundUp‘s journalists looked at 16 practical suggestions to move forward, and we’ve chosen a few of those to focus on:

Scale up daily tests rapidly

Currently we do about 5,000, which is promising, but not enough. Only by monitoring the epidemic properly can we know which measures work…

The cost of even the most ambitious testing programme, with door-to-door screening, is a pittance compared to that of an extended lockdown.

That same need for ramping up testing is stressed by News24, who point out that we are still far, far short of where we should be on this front:

Targets set by [Minister of Health Dr Zweli] Mkhize for testing capacity to reach 30 000 a day by the end of April are still far from being achieved. Mkhize on Saturday acknowledged that, while testing levels had increased significantly, more needed to be done. For the week 12 to 19 April, 39 658 tests were done, an average of 4 957 a day, compared to the previous week’s average of 3 527 and a total of 24 692.

It is also well below another target set of 10 000 a day, which was meant to have been achieved by mid-April.

If we want to reach that 30 000 a day mark, there is much to be done in the next nine days. You can read the rest of News24’s article about what we need to get right in the final nine days here.

Back to GroundUp…

Allow people to be outside with strict physical distancing

Open parks, streets and public spaces. Let children play ball games and allow people to walk their pets. Encourage walking and running.

Explain to the public why physical distancing is vital…Engage with communities, ask for their ideas, equip them to become informed and to communicate reliable information and knowledge and get feedback and questions.

It would also be nice if our publicly elected officials would play ball, rather than behaving like utter imbeciles.

Patience is wearing thin, and going forward law enforcement is going to need the public on their side if they want to have any sort of success with enacting lockdown measures.

Sadly, in many communities, that trust has already been all but eroded.

Make free or highly subsidised data available to people, now that connectivity is key

Poorer people without access to unlimited fibre or free internet hotspots, need to communicate with anxious families, access information, report food shortages or medical emergencies, or just deal with the boredom and anxiety…

Expanding access to what increasingly is a basic right, would be responsible and kind.

Businesses, both formal and informal, should be allowed to open again, albeit under strict physical distancing measures

Masks must be worn in workplaces. No more than a certain number of people should be allowed to work in a specified space. Every meeting should be prefaced with the question: “Can this be virtual?” People with cough or cold symptoms should be sent home to recover, and encouraged to get tested.

Relax the list of essential items – yeah, I think we can all understand why that is necessary. It’s become a touch farcical over the past two weeks.

Encourage restaurants to grow the delivery side of their businesses

Bars, shebeens, clubs, cinemas, gyms, hairdressers and other potentially high-risk facilities are more challenging to open, but that’s all the more reason for consultation with them to find practical suggestions that may allow them to do business, perhaps in a limited way.

Rounding up homeless people should cease

Homeless people, left to stay where they usually do, are probably at no greater risk of a Covid-19 outbreak than if all placed into camps. Homeless people are a minimal infection risk to the rest of the population, and the approach to them needs to be humane.

As we have already seen, especially in Cape Town, how to handle the homeless problem during lockdown has proven to be a divisive issue.

All of those above are suggestions, but if we want to take a closer look at what steps the government is considering, here’s a good place to start.

CapeTalk’s Refilwe Moloto spoke with Dr Glenda Gray, one of the leading scientists on the South African government’s advisory committee on COVID-19, about what happens next.

Here are some interesting quotes from the interview:

We have to wait and see what happens when we ease the lockdown, but certainly, household transmission will occur so if you have a Covid-19 infection the household, with overcrowded households that is where the transmission will occur…

I don’t think it will be possible to extend the lockdown, but I do think we will be having elements of un-phasing the lockdown, so let low-risk people out first…and let people out who need to kickstart the economy…

We won’t see the lockdown extended, but we may see certain groups of people be contained in the household while others go to work…

We also need to prepare ourselves for repeated lockdowns. When it gets out of control or people get too sick the government may be forced to pause the country again…

Eish.

It’s a good point, though. Mentally, we need to prepare for the fact that we’re in for the long haul here, and that we may once again be forced to endure another lockdown of some sort.

Perhaps the regulations won’t be as strict in a follow-up lockdown, and more businesses will be allowed to operate, but it’s all a bit of a guessing game.

I find this to be a particularly important quote, especially when you’re sifting through the nonsense shared by all of these sudden ‘experts’ on social media:

Every day it changes and every week counts – this epidemic, you count it by hours and days not by months or years.

We have never faced anything like this before in modern times, which is just part of why you’re probably sick to death of hearing the word “unprecedented”.

You can listen to the full interview with Dr Gray below:

[sources:groundup&news24&capetalk]