South Sudan Leaders Urge Citizens To Protect Each Other From Corona Virus (COVID-19)

Some South Sudanese officials who served on the dissolved High-Level taskforce on COVID-19 who tested positive, have called on citizens to observe all preventative measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Vice President Hussein Abdelbagi, chairman of the current National Task Force on COVID-19 is among 188 people who tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday. Abdelbagi urged the public to stay home, practice social distancing, and to wash their hands during his statement on national TV, SSBC.
Information Minister and government spokesperson, Michael Makuei believe he contracted the virus during meetings of the COVID 19 Taskforce.
“I contracted the virus in the course of my duty. We contracted it as members of the high-level task committee. This is why all the members are positive.” Makuei told The Insider.

Dr. Richard Lako, director for policy planning, budget, and research at the national health ministry and another member of the former Taskforce, says members could have contracted the virus from others because they were not practicing social distancing.
“They could also get it from their own homes. And all of them of course have been intermingling with so many people. Some of them attended the funeral of other people like this Abyei guy who passed away, some of them attended that funeral. There is another major [and] there are a couple of people, families and they visited.” Said Dr. Lako
Makuei says he immediately self-quarantined after learning he tested positive so as not to infect his family members or others.
“I have an isolated sitting room which I have turned into my quarantine. They serve me only when one person is assigned to me who comes in with gloves in hand and a mask.”
In an Eid al Fitr message to the nation on Sunday, First Vice President Riek Machar, who also tested positive and is self-isolating, said people should report to the hospital as soon as they have COVID-19 symptoms.
Speaking in Arabic, Machar says people should not think it’s malaria even though some of the symptoms are similar.
If you present with fever, flu, don’t say you can visit the hospital and ask a doctor to test you for this disease called Coronavirus. This because some people will test for malaria since the symptoms are the same but when it gets worse, doctors at the Doctor John Garang Infectious Disease Centre will help you.”
Machar’s wife, South Sudan defense minister Angelina Teny also tested positive. Speaking in Arabic in an Eid al Fitr message, Teny told the public to take preventative measures seriously.
“We are in quarantine following whatever the doctors tell us. If they say rest, we rest.” Angelina said urging citizens to also follow instructions of the health ministry and the national task force.
“You must do the same because once this disease has affected you, you have to protect others from contracting the virus because people have different immune systems, others will contract it but they will be fine, others will be critical and others will die.” She said adding she and Machar are both doing well.
As of Wednesday, the South Sudan government reported 994 confirmed cases, 10 deaths, and 6 recoveries.

President Salva Kiir warned in a speech on Monday that the pandemic would overwhelm South Sudan’s precarious health system if the situation gets any worse, and used the infections of the vice-president and ministers on the taskforce to underscore just how serious a threat it posed.