Covid-19: South Africa reopens land borders with Mozambique. Now what? – Watch

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Covid-19: South Africa reopens land borders with Mozambique. Now what? – Watch

2:51 CAT | 16 Feb 2021

Screen grab: STV

South Africa this Monday reopened the Ressano Garcia and Ponta d’Ouro border crossings with Mozambique in Maputo province, raising questions about the impact on the Covid-19 situation here.

Asked about these concerns, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Verónica Macamo said that Mozambique had never closed its borders, and that vigilance must be reinforced to prevent an increase in Covid-19 infections.

The land crossing between Mozambique and South Africa at Ressano Garcia and Ponta do Ouro, both in the province of Maputo, was re-established on Monday, following the decision by Cyril Ramaphosa government to reopen South Africa’s main land border posts, subsequent to a reduction in cases of the new coronavirus registered.

The Mozambican authorities not yet having commented on the position that the country would take in the face of the reopening of borders by one of the African nations with the highest number of infections, Verónica Macamo on Monday clarified that the reopening on the South African side automatically entailed reactivating the border on the Mozambican side.

“It was not Mozambique that closed the border to begin with, it was South Africa. What we are ensuring is that the protocol [between countries] is scrupulously followed so that people who come from South Africa with the tests done, when they arrive here [in the country] also do the tests,” Minister Macamo explained. “Prevention rules must be complied with,” to avoid the spread of the pandemic.

Those [prevention] rules ensure that the South African decision does not aggravate the epidemiological situation in Mozambique.

“The big problem we have at the moment is to make sure that what’s in the neighbours doesn’t come to us as an overload for what we already have.” And that means “not closing borders with South Africa, but ensuring that people who come from South Africa cannot exacerbate the problems that we already have”, the minister concluded.

The reopening of the two land borders of Ressano Garcia and Ponta do Ouro takes place in a context in which South Africa has reached a cumulative total of around 1.4 million infections and about 50,000 deaths, numbers swollen by a new variant of the disease, which has reportedly also been present in Mozambique since November of last year.

By António Tiua

Source: O País / STV