President Salva Kiir and his staff get a thermal screening before entering his office at State House in January 2021 | Credit | Office of the President

Health officials have advised the National Taskforce on coronavirus to cautiously lift the partial lockdown amidst a decline in cases in recent weeks.

The strict measures to contain the spread of the virus were issued in early February and extended last month.

It ordered for a shutdown of all businesses except for those dealing with essential services like food, medicines, and fuel. The public was required to adhere to the mandatory wearing of facemasks, social distancing, and hand washing.

But the orders were largely disregarded as public transport vehicles maintained their full capacity and other businesses continued to operate.

The partial lockdown has since expired on April 4 but there has been no official communication on whether to extend or remove the ban on social gathering, transportation among others.

When asked during the weekly briefly yesterday, the Audit committee on coronavirus could not clarify the matter.

But it said the body presented a situation analysis to the coronavirus task force about the virus following weeks of subsequent reduction in infection rate.

“I don’t want to pre-empt whether the lockdown will be relaxed or not, but we are meeting the indicators set by WHO standard,” said Dr. John Rumunu, the Director of Preventive Health Services.

“We as a public emergency operation center advised the technical steering committee that there is no alarm.”

For his part, the Operations Manager of the Coronavirus Emergency Center says South Sudan has consistently recorded the lowest cases of the virus in the past five weeks.

“The national steering committee and the national committee come with the decision. But we have seen and as you can see from our data the trend is coming down, it is not alarming,” Dr. Angelo Goup said.

He says this trend meets the World Health Organization’s requirement to relax the coronavirus restrictions.

“Normally when it is not alarming, a lockdown can be relaxed. But we must continue with the preventive measures. It does mean we remove our face masks.”

Dr. Goup said a total of a hundred people tested positive for the Coronavirus in the past one week – among whom, 70 are foreign nationals and 30 South Sudanese.