Close to three weeks after seconding a senior director in his department to augment the Eastern Cape’s fight against the new coronavirus, health minister Zweli Mkhize says he is happy with the province’s socioeconomic plan to deal with Covid-19.
The Eastern Cape has now overtaken KwaZulu-Natal with the third-highest number of coronavirus cases in SA, behind the Western Cape and Gauteng.
This prompted Mkhize to send a senior director to lead the tracing, screening and testing teams in the city.
That intervention seemed to have worked. Mkhize visited Port Elizabeth again on Thursday, this time with President Cyril Ramaphosa. During the visit, Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane took them through a presentation on measures the province was implementing to address the outbreak, which has infected 1,534 and killed 24 there.
“This province is now on the right track … [when I came here in April] the team was not quite coherent. But this time around, president, I’m happy,” Mkhize said.
“You are making fantastic progress,” Ramaphosa said to Mabuyane
“I’m really impressed with the strategy you have put in place. The Eastern Cape is live and awake. I particularly like the institutional framework [that you have your] own provincial coronavirus command council [which is] much broader than we have at national level.”
By LUYOLO MKENTANE
