PRESS RELEASE: COVID DEEMED CATEGORY 2 "NOTIFIABLE MEDICAL CONDITION"

PRESS RELEASE5 May 2022For immediate distributionMINISTER GAZETTES HEALTH REGULATIONS – COVID DEEMED CATEGORY 2 “NOTIFIABLE MEDICAL CONDITION”The Health Minister yesterday promulgated the Health Regulations Amendment, 2022. These regulations, which list COVID-19 as a category 2 notifiable medical condition, are now in effect and bring about changes to the existing 2017 Regulations Relating to the Surveillance and the Control of Notifiable Medical Conditions. Read together, these are now the new “rules for society” going forward, indefinitely, and until decided otherwise by the Health Minister. As with the Disaster Management Act Regulations, these Regulations can be changed at any time with immediate effect to limit our constitutional rights to greater degrees.Despite the Health Regulations Amendment, 2022 being promulgated, the Minister is still allowing for public comments on the Draft Health Regulations until 5 July 2022. “The Health Regulations Amendment, 2022 differs from the Draft Health Regulations.  Those regulations would have instituted e.g. mandatory “treatment” (which was undefined and could have been interpreted to mean mandatory vaccination) and they are not included in the Health Regulations Amendment, 2022 now promulgated by the Minister,” says FOR SA’s Executive Director, Michael Swain.Swain welcomed the extended opportunity for comment, but pointed out that the Health Regulations Amendment, 2022 still “fail to incorporate many of the over 300,000 individual comments made by the publicto oppose sections of theDraft Health Regulations - specifically that the Minister has the sole discretion to list something a ‘notifiable medical condition’; and that these Regulations will remain in effect indefinitely as long as a disease is listed as a notifiable medical condition.”“FOR SA is also fundamentally opposed to the numeric limitations imposed on gatherings as well as the requirement that proof of vaccination or negative COVID tests must be shown to gain access to meetings over 1,000 people indoors, regardless of the capacity of the building.” “It is a gross violation of religious freedom rights to force a pastor, imam, rabbi or priest to exclude a person from a religious serviced based upon their economic to pay for a COVID test or their vaccination status,” says Swain, “This is reminiscent of the hated ‘dompas’ of the apartheid era since non-compliance can be punished by a 10- year jail sentence of an unlimited fine”.Questions remain overall about the continued regulation of South African society under the pretext of a health emergency.“Why has COVID-19 been listed as a category 2 notifiable medical condition (i.e. the second most severe category), irrespective of variant, and at a time when much of the rest of the world is moving away from COVID-19 regulations entirely?” asks Swain.ENDS.For more information, contact:Michael SwainExecutive Director, FOR SAEmail: info@forsa.org.zaTel: 072 270 1217