Thanks very much, Madam Speaker. The issue of testing has been a major weapon in our arsenal as we fight this pandemic. As we speak now South Africa has gone beyond 600 000 tests. This is quite a huge number considering that when we started we were doing about maybe 300 tests and so on. So the numbers have increases to appoint where we are very close to around an average of about 18 000 to 20 000 tests that we do overnight, and in some of the days we exceed and some of the days we are bit less.
The real thing that is hitting us is the issue of the global shortages in the supply. So have actually got the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority going all out to ensure that as many as possible diagnostic test kits are licensed so that there are available where we can. Where we are getting a challenge is that even if it is licensed it still has to go through validation processes. That is going on right now. As I have a similar question I may give you figures a bit later. But the point at the end of the day is that we doing everything that we can to ensure that we keep to the level of testing that we need to able to get a sense of the positivity rates and manage the infection particularly the issue of ensuring that who is positive needs to be in hospital or at home. And those who were contacted must be tested and be put in quarantine. Everyone else must know that each one of us can contract the infection.
It becomes important for us to say that all that we are doing in increasing the numbers of testing is constraint by factors that are beyond our control which is what the global supply situation is. There are some of the countries that have decided on focussing on it as more of the resource nationalism is taking place. Every country is looking for what we are also looking for. Lack of our internal capacity is a challenge - lack of capacity to manufacture our own diagnostic kits. I think we need to in future invest on that as we go on as well. Thank you very much.