Just two months ago, there were fears that the coronavirus spread in the Free State would skyrocket after an outbreak at a church service.

But the province may have turned the corner, recently earning the praise of health minister Zweli Mkhize on how it has battled to contain the pandemic.

Armed with technology, rigorous screening and insistence to place infected people in government facilities where they can be monitored helped the province, Mkhize said.

At least 1,259 people were feared to have come into contact with five Covid-19-positive travellers from Texas in the US, Israel and France at a church service in Mangaung, Bloemfontein. In order to curb the spread that could have resulted in thousands contracting the virus, the government had to act quickly.

Health MEC Montseng Tsiu said they reached out to cellphone companies for their technology to tracing people that had attended the church service and also went on radio stations calling for anyone that had attended the service to either avail themselves or immediately go for testing.

"So our fear was the people that have met these people at church, from church they went home, obviously they would have met with their families and other neighbours and all that," Tsiu said.

"Luckily, Vodacom came into the fore and said we can assist. They said we can try and zoom at the church and then look at the movement of these people from the church. Then we asked other cellphone companies as well."

This data was then used to pin down the exact areas that the people had visited as well as their location. Community healthcare workers were then sent across the province to find, screen and test those who had attended the church service and their contacts.

Tsiu said this, along with the insistence that those found to be infected or awaiting their results be moved to government isolation facilities, helped curb the crisis. "Once you test positive, we take you into isolation."

She said they had also treated people awaiting their results as possible cases and therefore took them into quarantine facilities. "Because we are afraid that the period before you get the results and yet you are infected you'll be spreading the virus, so we take you away."

Tsiu said they had, within weeks, traced all the contacts from the church service.

So far, the province has screened more than 2-million of its 3-million population.

Tsiu said although the number of cases was still increasing, they were at a very low and "manageable" rate.

Vodacom spokesperson Byron Kennedy said they have been assisting the government with data used to track the spread of the disease and also to monitor people's movements.