South Africa's total number of confirmed coronavirus cases have increased by 152 to 554, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced on Tuesday.
Mkhize said that government's strategy remains to slow the rate of infection to prevent the health system from being overwhelmed.
”Our main priority is to flatten the curve of infection. We are in a battlezone and we are the foot soldiers,” said Mkhize.
Mkhize's announcement comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a 21-day national lockdown on Monday night. The lockdown announcement awas accompanied by a range of radical measures aimed at saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
The lockdown will be effective at midnight on Thursday, 26 March and will end on 16 April.
Only patients, police and nurses will be allowed to leave home during the lockdown and citizens won’t be allowed to leave home unless it is to seek medical care, buy food, medicine and other supplies or collect a social grant.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has roped in the SANDF and the police to ensure maximum compliance with the lockdown regulations.
Announcing the lockdown on Monday evening, Ramaphosa said the shutdown was necessary to fundamentally disrupt the chain of transmission across society.
“I have accordingly directed the South African National Defence Force be deployed to support the South African Police Service in ensuring that the measures we are announcing are implemented,” he said.
On Monday, the SANDF was already seen in the streets of Johannesburg in Gauteng, the province with the highest number of infections, and in a statement released later the same day its top brass later confirmed that they were preparing to assist government in the fight against the spread of the coronavirus.