With just hours to go before the government’s interim coronavirus rules were due to expire, the health department assured the public that new measures would be published in the Government Gazette before coming into effect on Thursday.
The new regulations were expected to be promulgated in terms of section 90 of the National Health Act, according to a senior health official. By 7.45pm on Wednesday, they had not been published before previous measures expired at midnight.
The regulations will cover rules for mask wearing, the size of public gatherings and entry requirements for travellers to SA, deputy director-general for National Health Insurance Nicholas Crisp said on the Cape Talk radio station. He did not provide more details.
The new regulations are expected to cover a narrower scope than the controversial proposals originally flighted by health minister Joe Phaahla on March 15. The original proposals were sharply criticised for attempting to apply measures devised for managing Covid-19 to all notifiable diseases and for the limits they placed on constitutionally enshrined rights, as well as for failing to take account of how the coronavirus pandemic and scientists’ understanding of the disease have evolved in the past two years.
The health regulations were intended to replace aspects of the controversial lockdown regulations implemented by the government in response to the pandemic that critics said over time served more to dampen economic activity than contain the spread of the virus.
Faced with growing political and legal pressure, the government lifted the state of disaster and scrapped the lockdown regulations on April 4, but put interim "post-disaster recovery" rules in place for 30 days to give officials time to craft the legislative framework required to ensure continuity of the Covid-19 social relief of distress grant, and key health interventions such as wearing masks in indoor public settings.
Business Day understands that instead of amending four sets of regulations — three in terms of the National Health Act and one in terms of the International Health Regulations Act — the minister has opted to amend only the regulations governing notifiable medical conditions.
Crisp said the department’s priority is to have the flexibility to be able to quickly tighten or ease key public health measures in response to Covid-19.
Other measures originally contemplated in the draft regulations would be finalised later.
The public was initially given 30 days to comment on the draft health regulations, but the deadline was subsequently extended to April 24. The extension was granted partly due to the volume of submissions received — over 150,000 inputs, according to the health department.
Several organisations — including the DA, trade union Solidarity, lobby group AfriForum and business association Sakeliga — previously threatened legal action if the minister’s original proposals were not substantially changed. The draft regulations were also panned by the National Liquor Traders Association, which said they were so broad they would allow the health minister to ban alcohol sales and impose curfews.
AfriForum said on Wednesday its legal team was ready to fight the health regulations if they were not changed.
It said it was concerned about the public-participation process, because it submitted more than 30,000 individual comments, while lobby group DearSA had submitted 283,000, a total far exceeding the 150,000 inputs the health department said it had received.
"There is no reason these temporary health regulations should be made permanent. While many countries across the globe have dropped regulations such as the wearing of masks, the SA government wants to permanently place these measures in law. It’s absolutely illogical," said AfriForum campaigns manager Jacques Broodryk.
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