It has been 11 days since SA went into national lockdown, with the number of new infections seemingly scaled down.

While it may be too early for this to be directly linked to the lockdown, SA only recently surpassed 1,500 confirmed cases, lower than the earlier predictions of 6,000 cases by now.

The strict lockdown measures restricted people's movements and sale of goods, stopped non-essential workers from going to work, banned public gatherings of more than 100 and later 50 people. The military has been deployed to help enforce the regulations.

A quick analysis of the rate of infections shows that since the lockdown daily new infections have been kept under 100.

Before the lockdown, the number of new infections ranged between 128 going as high as 243.

These decreased dramatically from March 28 with the highest being 93 on March 29 despite more tests happening daily.

A global infection rate analysis by the Financial Times has shown that the lockdown was critical in flattening the curve in comparison to other countries that were slow in implementing it.

Health minister Zweli Mkhize on Friday attributed the slower rate of new infections to the closure of borders, quarantining of people arriving in the country, restrictions on gatherings and banning of overcrowded public transport such as buses, trains and taxis.

Mkhize, however, also cautioned against complacency, saying the tests being conducted were way too low.

"To date 44,292 [now 53,937] have been tested largely in private laboratories. A total of 47,541 tests have been completed, of which 6,000 were performed in the public national health laboratory services.

"This is way too few considering the size of our population and other important factors such as inequality, poverty and underlying disease burden we have," Mkhize said.

He said the launch of 67 mobile testing units expected to increase daily testing from 5,000 to 30,000 will most likely see an increase in the numbers.

"I continue to emphasise that we should not be complacent about the lower than expected increase in cases - we will only have a clear sense of the country status once we have embarked on our community screening and testing programme which we expect to roll out in a couple of days."

He also said that with winter approaching, people experiencing flu symptoms were expected to flood hospitals and clinics from next month, creating a fertile ground for coronavirus to spread.

"This means this small growth in numbers we may be currently experiencing is the calm before a heavy and devastating storm," Mkhize said.

"So we need to be aware that there may not be further warnings before the pounding descends," he said.

Wits professor of vaccinology Shabir Madhi, who delivered a presentation to the Wits University Council on Friday, emphasised that the best way to tackle Covid-19 is still through physical distancing and substantially increasing testing and quarantining.

Madhi said what needs to be prioritised urgently in SA included scaling up country-wide diagnostic capacity.