GEORGE NEWS - Etienne Engelbrecht (39), a healthcare worker at Kuyasa Clinic in Thembalethu who contracted COVID-19, says one of the difficult things during his recovery was to explain to his young children that he could not get close to them.
“It was difficult to explain to my kids that I could not get too close to them and the fact that I had to keep to only certain areas of the house,” he says. His children are 18 months and 4 years old.
Engelbrecht is one of the more than 70 000 people in the Western Cape to contract COVID-19 to date.
His initial symptoms were a sore throat and a severe headache. When he got tested, he was shocked at first when he received his results.
“I was really nervous for what the next 14 days would have in store for me,” says Engelbrecth. "Fortunately I did not develop severe symptoms and I was able to isolate at home."
Engelbrecht is from George, the subdistrict with the highest number of cases in the Garden Route.
Knowing how challenging it was during his isolation, he finds it difficult to understand how some people still don’t see the seriousness of the virus. “There are still people within my community who don’t obey the rules which are set to protect all of us,” he says and stresses the 5 golden rules of handwashing or sanitising of hands, not touching your face and wearing a mask in public, coughing and sneezing in the bend of your elbow or a tissue, keeping at least 1,5 metres between you and others and staying home when you are sick.
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