South Africa is unlikely to impose a harsh lockdown as fears of Monkeypox reaching the country and spreading quickly grow. The reassurance from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) comes as there are growing fears that harsh measures during the Covid-19 pandemic could return.
During the outbreak of Covid-19, travel bans were imposed, and hard lockdown brought the country to a grinding halt. As a result, the unemployment rate increased significantly and poverty, crime and corruption seemed to increase even more.
While the country has not recorded any case of Monkeypox yet, government and health experts remain on high alert.
“It’s not a virus that’s highly transmissible, it’s not like Covid-19 at all and we can get ahead of the outbreak by contact tracing, monitoring and isolation of cases,” said NICD’s Jacqueline Weyer at a media briefing on Wednesday.
“I think we’re all acutely aware of the economic and the social impact of such a decision and I think it’s always like a cost-benefit discussion that one needs to have. Even if we were to have one or two cases of monkeypox, our system would deal with that and the cost would not be the same than closing the borders, even for one day,” Weyer said.
“We need to weigh up the risks and the benefits of the situation in an objective way and I think that’s what we’re seeing in the global community as well, it’s not just South Africa, no other countries have closed their borders or imposed travel embargoes on any country,” Weyer added.
Weyer said the situation would be assessed with new developments. Adrian Puren, the NICD’s Executive Director shared the same sentiment.
“We know that Johannesburg and South Africa is a hub of international travel so I think that is one of our risks, that there will likely be importation but we don’t force that, even though we may have cases, that we will see any establishment of this disease in South Africa. In other words, I don’t foresee monkeypox becoming endemic in South Africa,” Puren said.
Source: Jacaranda FM, East Coast Radio, image from Twitter