With an increase in local transmissions, more testing is required to break the taboo that the virus only affects those with a passport, says Health Professions Council of South Africa president Dr Kgosi Letlape.
“We now have community transmission which means you no longer need to have travelled to be susceptible because [Covid-19] is now in the communities.
“More [screening and testing] will dispel this myth that the virus is selective on rich people who travel and have passports.
“Once we have community transmission, it means all of us, regardless of tribe and class, are susceptible to getting the virus,” he said.
Community screening and testing would also break the back of the pandemic, said Doctors Without Borders’ infectious disease doctor Gilles van Cutsem.
“Identifying the cases, ensuring those infected don’t infect others and monitoring their contacts is the way of breaking the back of this epidemic,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the race against the coronavirus, Germany is betting on widespread testing and quarantining to break the infection chain, a strategy borrowed from South Korea whose success in slowing the outbreak has become the envy of the world.
Germany is already carrying out more coronavirus tests than any other European country at a rate of 300,000 to 500,000 a week, according to officials.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government aims to ramp that up to at least 200,000 tests a day, according to an interior ministry document seen by several German media outlets.
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