At a televised briefing, the chair of the government’s advisory committee said South Africa’s success in halting an exponential rise in cases was unprecedented.

South Africa says it is on a unique path – that new evidence from the past fortnight shows that no other country has managed to cut and then stabilise the number of new infections so abruptly.

The government’s chief adviser Prof Abdool Karim, said it was clear that by acting early, and introducing a nationwide lockdown two weeks ago, the virus had been brought under control – at around 65 new cases a day.

Prof Karim acknowledged that might not last for long – that an exponential rise in cases, particularly in poor communities, was probably inevitable at some point.

But he said South Africa had bought itself valuable time, and had used that to train an army of over 20,000 field workers to hunt down new cases.

Our current trajectory is unique, he said. But we have a long hard struggle ahead.