We're clueless, say residents of town at centre of Cape's rural Covid-19 outbreak

The fruit and wine farming town of Ceres, two hours north of Cape Town, has become the Western Cape's rural Covid-19 epicentre.

With 100 cases confirmed as of 5pm on Monday, Witzenberg has the most cases among all municipalities outside the Cape Town metropole.

A large portion of the cases were reported at the Warmbokkeveld Prison in Ceres, where 24 officials tested positive.

According to the department of correctional services, no inmates at the prison have tested positive.

“It must be acknowledged that as the virus continues to spread in communities, correctional centres within the same localities will remain vulnerable,” said department spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo. “Officials attending gatherings and movements from their residences to places of work are receiving attention, in addition to screening.”

A prison official who tested positive died on Monday and Nxumalo said health department officials were investigating the cause of death.

The Western Cape government said it was taking an active case-finding approach in Witzenberg.

“We have been concentrating our screening and contact tracing efforts in this area since the first cluster of cases emerged to make sure that we identify every single person identified with Covid-19,” said premier Alan Winde.

The ANC provincial legislature representative for Witzenberg, Pat Marran, said in Ceres on Wednesday that Covid-19 spread throughout the region through food-processing plants.

According to Marran, this was the result of a system in which high-performing workers were moved from factory to factory — a system that allegedly still took place after Covid-19 cases were recorded in some of the major food factories in the region.

“They've got a system where if a person performed during the season, you will not be laid off, you will be sent maybe to the other pack sites — meaning that a possible positive case might have been spread to the other pack sites, it happened on the 7th and on the 8th [of April]," said Marran.

Fourteen days after the person was transferred, positive cases started being registered at the factory, he said.

Nxumalo said those who tested positive at correctional services facilities were rapidly isolated, and the department's disaster management response strategy had been activated to manage the pandemic at prisons.

Three other prisons in the Western Cape had Covid-19 cases, he said. Worcester had eight, Goodwood two and Voorberg in Porterville one.

“Health-care teams are on site, armed with appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), which includes goggles, gloves, masks and gowns, rendering care services to distress cases and monitoring those likely to develop acute respiratory challenges,” said Nxumalo.

When TimesLIVE visited Warmbokkeveld prison on Wednesday, guards and officials wore gloves and masks, and guards could be seen disinfecting car doors. Even children playing on the lawns of officials' homes wore masks.

Across the road in Mooiblom informal settlement, however, there was no semblance of preventive measures. Young men — seasonal workers from the surrounding farms now out of jobs — stood next to each other, chatting in the midday sun.

Though they were scared of the virus, they said they had no way of protecting themselves.

“The government didn't come to test here. They didn't give us masks. The farmers told us to stand down because there is no work. There's no work, no food, nothing,” said one of the men, Tello Olifant.

Other men washed their cars at the side of the road. Though they said they were afraid of contracting the virus, a mixture of apathy and confusion about how to protect themselves meant they were taking no protective measures.

Asked why they were standing together, John Lehasa said, “We are friends” — before asking what they were supposed to do.

The men — who spoke Afrikaans, Sesotho or isiXhosa — said they did not know how to get social relief and how the process worked, complaining that they do not understand the government's messages in English.

Nxumalo said correctional services was working with other government departments to prepare for the possibility of the pandemic reaching “unimagined” proportions.

"[We have] a list of hospitals and health-care centres where inmates could be transferred in case they require admissions. Appropriate safe escorts will be employed to limit the risk for officials and hospitals receiving inmates in need of care,” he said.

Prisons were being disinfected and out-of-cell times were being managed “to avoid concentration of inmates and officials in open spaces. This measure does not abolish access to open air, which is mandatory for inmates.”

Visits will remain restricted.