Coronovirus: City of Tshwane closes amenities amid global outbreak
18 March 2020
The City of Tshwane has announced the closure of amenities in its bid to minimise the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus, which first emerged in Wuhan, China.
"In the wake of President Cyril Ramaphosa's declaration of a national state of disaster on Sunday to combat the Covid-19 epidemic, the City of Tshwane yesterday activated the municipal disaster management centreaimed at coordinating all the efforts and activities aligned to the initiatives of national government to contain the spread of the global epidemic," the City said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Today, the disaster management centre announced a bouquet of measures to safeguard the City's employees as well its customers, from contracting and spreading the Covid-19 epidemic, colloquially known as the coronavirus," the City added.
In Ramaphosa's announcement on Sunday, extensive measures were announced to curb the spread of the virus.
News24 earlier reported that some of the major decisions Cabinet had taken included:
a ban on travel from the following high-risk countries: Italy, Iraq, South Korea, Spain, Germany, United States, United Kingdom and China;
the closure of 35 land ports of entry and two of the country's eight seaports;
a ban on gatherings of more than 100 people;
the introduction of tracking, tracing and monitoring systems; and
the consideration of a fiscal relief package to minimise damage to the economy.
The country had 116 confirmed cases at the time of publication.
As a result, the measures the City will be implementing from Wednesday until further notice include, but are not limited to, the following:
the closure of all swimming pools and libraries;
limiting the number of visitors to parks and resorts to 100 revellers;
the closure of all Early Childhood Development Centres until the re-opening of schools;
limiting museum services to a maximum of 10 visitors per group; and
limiting bookings at community halls.
The City also discouraged the public from visiting its customer care walk-in-centres, except in extremely exceptional circumstances.
"This is done to try to limit human contact between the employees and the public. The public is encouraged to use alternative avenues to obtain information from the City such as utilisation of our e-services. We will also introduce mitigating measures at our public amenities such as parks and resorts with a view to limiting access control to those amenities," the statement further read.
Public transport will be disinfected before leaving depots and sanitisers will be provided for members of the public at all entry points.
Community halls and cemeteries will be regularly cleaned and disinfected, but the City maintains that funerals, weddings and similar events at community halls and other venues should be restricted to 100 people.
"The City is cognisant of the pandemic and will take all measures necessary to ensure that we safeguard our employees as well as our valued customers from contracting the virus," the statement read.
