Western Cape Premier Alan Winde was none too pleased with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s newly imposed Covid-19 regulations for the province.

On Monday night, Ramaphosa declared the province’s scenic Garden Route a Covid-19 hot spot and declared its beaches closed from December 16 until January 3.

He said to date, over 38 000 health workers in the public sector have tested positive for the coronavirus. Of these, nearly 5 000 were admitted to hospital. "Sadly, 391 health workers in the public sector have passed away," he said.

Winde said jobs could not be sacrificed and a second pandemic of hunger, poverty and inequality would begin to gain momentum when people started losing employment.

However, he added that the response to the second wave of Covid-19 needed to be taken seriously in order to save lives.

“In an unprecedented crisis such as the one we are facing, it is important that we strive to get this balance right,” Winde said.

He said he welcomed Ramaphosa’s approach to avoid a “blunt lockdown” and the fact that the president had considered the detailed plans and submissions that the Western Cape government had put forward.

These included limiting the number of people at gatherings and excluding wine tastings and sales at wine farms from the prohibition against the sale of alcohol over weekends, as the wine tourism economy employed thousands of people from rural communities.

“In the president’s address last night this was announced, but we are concerned that the regulations issued subsequently now limit the sale to Saturdays only.

“This doesn’t make any sense, as there is no difference between a Saturday and Sunday for this industry, and this limitation will undermine wine tourism, which is highly dependent on weekends.

“We will be following up immediately to understand why this change was introduced in the regulations,” Winde said.

He said the closure of beaches along the Garden Route would result in many job losses and was of great concern.

Winde said the local government would be making further submissions to the national government because they did not believe the right balance had been achieved and intervention needed to be reconsidered.