Following a ministerial and presidential visit to the Western Cape this past week to address "South Africa’s 65 percent Covid-19 burden in the province, we now turn our attention to Eastern Cape", he said in a statement on Sunday.

The Eastern Cape had similar numbers to Gauteng, but had recorded the second highest mortality rate "and its proximity and inter-connectedness with the Western Cape makes the province especially vulnerable", he said.

In addition, there was an increase in the infection rate among healthcare workers, both in the public and private sectors. As at June 6, the Eastern Cape had recorded 258 Covid-19 positive healthcare workers and 14 Covid-19-related deaths.

Mkhize would return to the Eastern Cape later this week while thedeputy health minister would go to the Western Cape to "continue ministerial oversight there".

"We have been engaging the [health] MEC and the DG [director general] constantly, and we receive daily situation analyses of the province's outbreak. The province is dividing up the hotspots into sub-districts to facilitate a strong community-based response. Decentralisation is particularly important for rural areas to ensure they are adequately capacitated and empowered to successfully manage the epidemic locally," he said.

Since his last visit to the province in April, national health department interventions in the Eastern Cape had included support by a national team comprising of Wayne Ramkrishna of the malaria, vectorborne, and zoonotic diseases section, Dr Kerrigan McCarthy of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), and Mzimasi Neti Darren Muganhiri, also of the NICD.

On the same day, emergency supplies of personal preventive equipment (PPE) were delivered to East London by the national team. A second batch was couriered to East London on April 22. 

The team members from the NICD worked with the contact tracing and community screening teams while Ramkrishna worked with the finance, clinical management, infection prevention and control (IPC) and the occupational health and safety (OHS) teams to assess the PPE needs in the province.

A stock audit was done and as at May 8 it was established that there was enough stock for four weeks and "it was a matter of ensuring the stock was equally distributed across provinces". A fast-track mechanism was built into the procurement systems and an agreement was put in place for more frequent reporting from the stock visibility system (SVS). A six-month needs modeling was done and presented to the premier.

Twenty members of the Cuban Brigade were sent to bolster the response, particularly community-based response, and 840 additional nurses had been employed. 

The testing backlog in various centres was also being cleared. In Port Elizabeth, the backlog had been reduced from 13,000 to 5,106, and by Monday it should be around 4,000, and cleared completely during the rest of the week. Heat lysis extraction of RNA had been a key innovation to increase turnover and another machine was being sent to Port Elizabeth.

The Mthatha backlog was currently at 8000 and was expect to be cleared in the next few weeks as well. East London was still a problem, because there was no resident pathologist. The Gene-Xpert machine did not require a pathologist to interpret and this was being used in East London. However, there had been a shortage of testing kits. The central office would increase the number of testing kits being sent to East London. The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) was also looking into sending other testing modalities that did not require pathologists. There would also be intervention to ensure a more targeted testing approach.

Many essential seasonal workers travelled to the Western Cape and back, and both provinces had been proactive in conducting road-side screenings. The Western Cape now had a co-ordinated programme of screening and assessing seasonal travellers before they left to go home to the Eastern Cape.

The two premiers would also hold regular meetings to discuss ways to better manage the impact of inter-provincial movement on the spread of Covid-19, Mkhize said.

African News Agency