AfriForum heads to court to challenge new Covid-19 rules
Lobby group AfriForum says it will be approaching the High Court in Pretoria to challenge the new Covid-19 regulations.
The new rules were published late on Wednesday evening.
In March, government lifted the national state of disaster due to the decrease in the number of Covid-19 infections and deaths.
The Act which was used to manage the disease for two years also fell away, and government instead introduced new draft regulations under the National Health Act to manage Covid-19 that lasted for 30 days.
"Will be heading to court on urgent basis to lodge application have these regulations overturned as we socially don't approve them and don't agree with the way government has implemented these regulations and shows absolute abuse of power,” says AfriForum’s Jacques Broodryk.
"Its very strange the way government has handled this between us and Dear SA more than 310 000 individual public comments, I do not believe that government had time to read through and consider every comments before they made these decisions."
Dr Jo Barnes, an epidemiologist from Stellenbosch University, says some of the rules have no scientific basis.
"It is strange that they are asking adults to wear mask in indoors gatherings but not for children or school pupils, there are contradictions in the regulations. The same goes for entry into South Africa people can enter if they are vaccinated.
"If they are not, they will be tested and if they test positive, they will have too self-isolate. If they don't show symptoms but tested positive they don't have to isolate.”
Barnes says the back and forth on the Covid-19 rules will lead to more people ignoring the regulations.
"The more these processes don't run smoothly, and government departments not approaching regulations with the same framework the more people start ignoring them, the lack of trust works in favour of disobedience with the rules, also strengthens the hand of people who are anti-vaccines.”
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