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The changes to the State of Disaster regulations announced by the President tonight do not go far enough, and continue to hold the country back from a full recovery.

Despite some welcome changes, the persisting rules will harm jobs and increase poverty while providing no benefit at all.

The DA welcomes the scrapping of the outdoor mask-wearing requirement and the announcement  that vaccinated travellers will not need a negative PCR test to enter the country.

This will go some way to helping our tourism industry and other cross-border businesses recover.

Unfortunately, the changes have come too late for the summer tourism season.

The retention of existing limits of 1000 and 2000 people at indoor and outdoor events will continue to strangle the events industry.

These number limits are completely arbitrary and are probably exceeded daily at many of our malls or markets.

The concession for venues with vaccinated or PCR negative people to go to half capacity is not enough; full capacity without any PCR or vaccine requirement should be allowed.

The rules make no sense as the country struggles with record-breaking joblessness, poverty, and rising food prices, but no Covid-19 pressure on our hospitals.

Children will continue to have to endure the discomfort and impediment to language and emotional development of wearing masks at school.

Social distancing and other workplace rules will continue to harm the productivity of government and other services.

There are other less well-known rules which Ministers have been empowered to make, such as those limiting family visit to prisons to two non-contact visits a month.

This is an ongoing cruelty.

On Wednesday 23 March 2022 South African will begin a third year of living under harmful and nonsensical  rules undemocratically decreed by the National Coronavirus Command Council.

The only measure the DA will support is the continuation of the Social Relief of Distress grant. This is necessary because of the extraordinary economic harm caused by lockdown rules.

The DA will take whatever action is necessary to ensure that every last restriction in terms of the State of Disaster is overturned – and to fight any attempt to make these permanent via regulations in the National Health Act or elsewhere.

A collective of eminent scientists has laid out very clearly what needs to happen with the knowledge gained over the last two years, including that SARS-CoV-2 be removed from the list of notifiable medical conditions.

They recommend that public health interventions  such as optimising ventilation of indoor spaces and masking should be recommended only for during a Covid-19 and/or any other respiratory virus (including influenza should the winter influenza seasons return) waves and for high-risk individuals.

They recommend that all border restrictions entering and leaving the country regarding SARS-CoV-2 should be removed with immediate effect.

These scientists recommend that the  focus of South Africa’s efforts in this third year of the Covid-19 pandemic should be on repairing:

The damage done to children’s education.

The damage done to non-Covid-19 health priorities, including childhood vaccination, HIV, TB, antimicrobial resistance and chronic care programmes.

Vulnerable populations such as the elderly and those with comorbidities and who lack social protections.

The collapse of hospital services such as those in the Eastern Cape

These public health professionals point out that health services in prior waves in many provinces were characterised by late managerial reaction, and they recommend focussed attention on the accountability of health service senior managerial services across the country.

Their view on the proposed, permanent regulations is that they reflect “incompetence and South Africa deserves better”.

Issued by DA National Spokesperson, Siviwe Gwarube MP