Security has been beefed up around The Ranch Resort in Polowane, Limpopo, where a group of South Africans being repatriated from the coronavirus epicentre in Wuhan, China, will be quarantined.

The police and the military have taken over the four-star resort which is about 25km from Polokwane since around midday on Thursday and have commenced blockading the main road leading to it.

The R101 has been blockaded by the police and military as they prepare to host about 122 citizens who are expected to land in the country on Friday.

Staff at the hotel has been placed on leave for the next 21 days while patrons who were booked in at the hotel were told to vacate it on Thursday morning.

“We were told that if we fail to come today [to fetch belongings], we will have to come back after 21 days. I can’t stay here for those days, I have children to look after,” one staff member said.

The number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus in South Africa  increased to 17 on Thursday.

Minister of health Zweli Mkhize will on Thursday evening officially announce that resort had been picked as the quarantine centre.

This comes after initial negotiations with a resort in the Free State where the repatriated South Africans were to be quarantined collapsed last week.

Mkhize has been holding meetings with the ANC in Limpopo along with the party’s national deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte since early Thursday morning.

The meetings were held to allay any fears regarding the patients being quarantined in the province.

The ANC Youth League in the province said it was worried about the decision and had planned to hold a protest around the area.

“Our bone of contention as the ANCYL in Peter Mokaba is that the first site which was identified is the Free State, and now that the Free State has reneged, Limpopo province was seen to be a low-hanging fruit to play host to the patients,” its statement read.

“While acknowledging the work done by govt [government] of educating the people of South Africa about coronavirus, we are worried about the socioeconomic conditions that the majority of our people find themselves in.

For example, if one of the employees were to contract the virus, they would transmit it to the multitudes of people that they interact with in the public transport, their homes and other places where black people socialise.”