Who is most at risk from COVID-19?
The Minister of Health, Dr Zweli Mkhize, says South Africa will monitor pedantically developments around Coronavirus after confirming the first positive case of COVID-19.
Briefing the media on Thursday afternoon following the first confirmed case of Coronavirus in the country, Mkhize said there is no need to panic as medical authorities are taking all measures to contain the spread of the virus.
A 38-year-old KwaZulu-Natal man, who travelled to Italy with his wife, has tested positive for the virus. The couple was part of a group of 10 people and they arrived back in South Africa on 1 March 2020.
According to the Minster, the patient consulted a private general practitioner on 3 March with symptoms of fever, headache, malaise, a sore throat and a cough. The practice nurse took swabs and delivered it to the lab. The patient has been self-isolating since 3 March. The couple also has two children.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases’ Professor Cheryl Cohen, who was briefing in Cape Town with the Minister, said as far as travellers are concerned, people who are most at risk of exposure are the traveller’s close contacts.
“The people that we will be quarantining are the people close to this individual.
“We have a definition of what constitutes a close contact. All those people will be asked to self-quarantine in their home for 14 days and be monitored by our medical staff to make sure that if they get any symptoms, they are rapidly tested,” she said.
Cohen said the case definition of the virus has been expanded to include testing of any person with a pneumonia of unexplained aetiology, even if they have not travelled.
“That was included to increase our sensitivity, our ability to detect a case should the virus be circulating in the community. We are planning to start testing for the virus on our routine surveillance programme.
“We have systems in place to monitor respiratory disease, predominantly focused on influenza,” she said.
Who is most at risk?
There’s currently no data indicating that people with HIV are more severely affected by the virus.
“What we know is that the severe cases to date are with elderly people. Based on what we know from other respiratory illnesses like influenza — including bacterial causes of pneumonia — people who are receiving antiretroviral treatment and are stable on treatment and well suppressed, the treatment substantially reduces their risk of severe illness with these viruses and there’s no reason to suspect that this should be different,” Cohen said.
She advised people who are concerned they meet the case definition of Coronavirus infection to seek care.
“Identify yourself at a [health] facility very quickly and don’t mix with other people. In the case of the infectious person, if you do have a surgical mask available, that could be helpful to reduce respiratory droplets,” she said.
Current status
Cohen said there is no indication that COVID-19 is spreading widely in South Africa.
“At this time, for the general public of South Africa, there isn’t a risk in terms of this virus spreading in the general community,” Cohen said.
The Minister said South Africa has not put any travel restrictions but vigilance will be increased to monitor the virus.
“We are going to be including a number of countries where we think that the level of transmission is higher, and encourage people to self-disclose their whereabouts and their contacts with people who could have been infected…
“We are going to follow international norms once we find that there was any contact,” Mkhize said.
Dedicated Hospitals
In addition to the operations centre, the department announced the following hospitals as centres for isolation and treatment of people infected with Coronavirus:
- Polokwane Hospital in Limpopo
- Rob Ferreira Hospital in Mpumalanga
- Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, Steve Biko Hospital and Tembisa Hospitals in Gauteng
- Grace Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal
- Klerksdorp Hospital in the North West
- Kimberly Hospital in the Northern Cape
- Pelonomi Hospital in the Free State
- Livingstone Hospital in the Eastern Cape
- Tygerberg Hospital in the Western Cape – SAnews.gov.za
Alan Straton
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