Prognosis
South Africa Plans Mass Screening to Tackle Coronavirus
- Field workers to be sent to check on people in their homes
- Country has 1,353 confirmed cases; 39,500 people tested
A motorist is cleared to proceed by an officer with police at a road block in Johannesburg on March 27.
Photographer: Marco Longari/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
South Africa will roll out a mass screening program for the coronavirus and dispatch about 10,000 field workers to check up on people in their homes, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to do so.
“We’ve had a very defensive, reactive approach,” Zweli Mkhize, South Africa’s health minister, told reporters on Tuesday. Now, “we are getting our ground operations up and running, scaling up our offensive.”