The post-pandemic era: Life without masks

The post-pandemic era: Life without masks

For the past two years, South Africans, young and old have had to wear face masks to any public place they were visiting to minimise the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had become such a big part of our lives that pupils who started school in 2020 did not know a school life without face masks and we had to wear them in malls, to work, on public transport and almost every public space.

On Wednesday, June 23, the National Health Minister, Honourable Dr Joe Phaahla, gazetted new regulations that allowed South Africans to go maskfree, following a decline in the number of reported COVID-19 reported cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

In a statement released by the Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, the government said a limited set of regulations, providing a framework for mitigating against a spike in COVID-19 infections driven by subvariant B.4 and B.5 of the Omicron variant, were published in May.

He said, during late April and most of May there was a significant peak in daily infections across the country starting to drive increased admissions to hospitals and daily deaths reported. Daily infections rose from as low as 250 cases per day in early April to just under 8 000 on 15 May 2022 with the positivity rate reaching 22% on 1st May and 20% on 15 May.

By mid-June the situation had taken a very positive direction with decline in daily cases, hospitalisation, positivity rate, reproductive number and reported deaths.

\the limited regulations which dealt with wearing of masks indoors, limitations of gatherings, vaccination proof or PCR negative tests at Ports of Entry, – should all be lifted,” he said.

\the limited regulations which dealt with wearing of masks indoors, limitations of gatherings, vaccination proof or PCR negative tests at Ports of Entry, – should all be lifted,” he said.

WEARING OF MASKS INDOORS

South Africans are no longer required to wear masks indoors and public spaces.

LIMITATIONS OF GATHERINGS

There will no longer be limits on gatherings. Events organisers and ordinary South Africans across the country were used to the restriction that limited gatherings of no more than 100 people and up to 50% of a venue's maximum capacity (if everyone was vaccinated) and a maximum of 1 000 people indoors and 2 000 outdoors were permitted (if the vaccine status was not known.)

VACCINATION PROOF OR PCR NEGATIVE TESTS AT PORTS OF ENTRY

Previously, international travellers (older than 12) arriving at South African Ports of Entry were required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and produce a valid vaccination certificate or produce a valid certificate of a negative PCR COVID-19 test, recognised by the World Health Organisation, which was obtained not more than 72 hours before the date of departure. This was lifted. The Minister thanked leaders of civil society, faith-based institutions, business, labour and traditional authorities for their support and assistance.

“We thank all Ministerial Advisory Committees for their selfless guidance without any claim of reward. We just need to end with caution that the COVID-19 virus is not yet gone, it is still in our midst, we are just stronger than before especially with vaccination and we urge those not yet vaccinated to come forward and those due for boosters to also come forward.”

They added that the vaccination program will remain and is now being integrated into normal health services.

“We want to take this opportunity on behalf of all government [sic] to thank South Africans for their support and cooperation over the last 2 years and 3 months. While there was a lot of common ground and agreement even across political lives early in the pandemic when we all thought it would be short and over within a few months, the longer it took more fatigue and disagreements on strategy started to surface.

“We appreciate the fact that notwithstanding the disagreements even leading to threats or even actual court actions the mainframe of our collective action remained until today. We thank South Africans for their resilience in internalising various measures of prevention and mitigation against the virus some of which will help us in dealing with some older respiratory diseases such as influenza and TB but also future respiratory epidemics.”•

Sources:www.sacoronavirus.co.za