Decisive and strong leadership and intersectoral action from South Africa in response to the COVID-19 virus

CITATION: Nkonki, L. & Fonn, S. 2020. Decisive and strong leadership and intersectoral action from South Africa in response to the COVID-19 virus. South African Medical Journal, 110(5), doi:10.7196/SAMJ.2020.v110i5.14739.The original publication is available at http://www.samj.org.zaSouth Africa (SA) reported its first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on 5 March 2020. For the 14 days from then until the time of writing (5 - 19 March), we have seen decisive, strong leadership from the President, and significant, important and necessary co-ordination between different ministries including Education, Justice, Health, Trade and Industry, Transport, Public Works and Infrastructure, Finance, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, and International Relations and Cooperation. In these 14 days, SA has rapidly produced and implemented a number of action items (Table 1). This intersectoral action and co-ordination is something that has been needed for a long time to address development in SA.http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/view/12879Publisher's versio