IOL
Gauteng pupils who attended KZN rage urged to co-operate with health-care workers
Johannesburg - The Gauteng Health Department has pleaded with learners who attended the Rage Festival to co-operate with health-care workers after it was announced that almost 1 000 learners from the province tested positive for coronavirus.
Last Sunday, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize urged revellers at the Rage Ballito Festival, held from November 27 to December 4, to get tested for Covid-19 and self-isolate after many of them as well as staff tested positive for the virus.
“We can confirm that we have now identified a number of Covid-19 cases arising from these super-spreader events. This, therefore, means that if you attended any of these Rage events, you are now regarded as a contact,” Mkhize said in a statement.
This weekend, the Gauteng Department of Health announced that significant progress had been made in tracing the majority of the learners who took part in the KZN festival.
“Out of 1 322 students, from the Johannesburg and Tshwane districts in the main, 1 050 have already undergone testing for Covid-19. Of these, 984 tested positive. These students had 340 contacts of which 32 tested positive,” said spokesperson for Gauteng Health MEC Kwara Kekana.
Kekana added that the department continued to plead with the learners who attended the event and their parents to co-operate with healthcare worker who were doing contact tracing as it was an important process in stopping the spread of coronavirus.
“Out of the total number of learners, 99 were unco-operative while the rest of the learners (173) either had supplied wrong contacts or were on voicemail,” she said.
The department reiterated Mkhize’s call on those who went to the rage events to quarantine themselves for 14 days and go for testing as a matter of urgency, and said that those who had tested positive needed to isolate for a mandatory 10 days.
“It must be pointed out that family contacts of those that test positive must also go for testing and must go into quarantine,” Kekana said.
Meanwhile, following Mkhize’s announcement that the Covid-19 cases were rising as a result of the Rage festival and super-spreader events, all
Rage Festival events for 2020 and 2021 were cancelled.
The Joburg Rage in the city’s CBD was scheduled for December 12 and 13, the Plett Rage was scheduled for January 29 to February 6 and the JBay Rage in Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape, was scheduled for December 15 to December 22.
“It is clear to us that regardless of the measures and precautions that we had put in place to ensure the safety of our attendees, the coronavirus is uncontrollable. The risk that this poses to you, our staff, our suppliers, artists, as well as the greater community does not warrant pushing forward,” the organisers of Plett Rage said in a statement on December 9.
...I remember that........was laughed at .
