Police have admitted to using riot shields and stun grenades to disperse a group of community health workers at the Eastern Cape Department of Health head office in Bhisho late on Thursday night. The group had arrived at the building for a meeting with a senior manager that day, only to be told he was at a funeral. They had no money to return home, so decided to sleep at the building until their appointment on Friday.
Hospital staff have reported receiving threats and being barred entry to the hospital. Patients have been relocated to Stanger hospital, discharged or moved by their families.Gauteng MEC for Health, Dr Bandile Masuku, is confident the province is prepared to weather the Covid-19 storm. During a webinar witheditor Mark Heywood, Masuku emphasised that the province is not yet experiencing the peak.
He said the province has a steady supply of oxygen and has set up a hospital bed management team to ensure a seamless flow of patients. Masuku defended the government’s new regulations on taxi load capacity and the ban on alcohol, saying both decisions were about balance. He said the alcohol ban would lessen the burden on hospitals and the new taxi rules are “justified and supported” by science, and allows for the reopening of the economy.The ban on the sale of alcohol and the imposition of a night-time curfew has been the last straw for restaurants struggling to make ends meet since the start of lockdown.
As debate over the reclosing of schools rages on, matrics are trying to get through their schoolwork while missing their friends and the year of excitement that could have been.Saturday marks the 11international Mandela Day, and neither the lockdown nor the pandemic have stopped civil society organisations from organising ways to commemorate the day.