WATCH LIVE | SA Medical Association holds Q&A on coronavirus

The SA Medical Association will hold a question and answer session on the coronavirus pandemic on Thursday evening.

Health minister Zweli Mkhize will also be present at the session.

On Thursday afternoon President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the total number of Covid-19 cases in SA had climbed to 150.

Ramaphosa said the increase was “concerning because that already tells us if you extrapolate that, it could start rising in greater numbers”.

He said the rise reinforced the government’s call for social distancing to slow the spread of the virus.

Following the expansion of nationwide routine testing for SARS-CoV-2 in public and private laboratories, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), a division of the National Health Laboratory Service, will start to function as a reference and surveillance laboratory for Covid-19.

This will include resolving unusual results and providing other laboratory functions. The NICD will also test routine surveillance samples to monitor the spread of Covid-19 across SA.

The NICD said most of the new cases were recorded in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. One new case was reported in Mpumalanga.