Freed when an out of court settlement was reached, the two Limpopo doctors forced into quarantine by authorities are considering legal action against the provincial health MEC Phophi Ramathuba.

‘We are happy and relieved to have been released. It was a traumatic experience and we would not want anyone to go through this if they are asymptomatic and can self-quarantine,’ said Dr Claire Olivier.

‘Although we were treated very kindly by the health workers, we were locked up for 24-hours a day for five days in small rooms that just had a bed in them. We were not checked by a doctor although Covid-19 can develop rapidly,’ she is quoted as saying in a Daily Maverick report.

Both Olivier, and her colleague, Dr Taryn Williams, have since tested negative for the virus.

The settlement was made an order of the court, but shortly afterwards Ramathuba claimed that the doctors had been released because they had tested negative – not because she had been wrong to forcibly quarantine them against the Health Minister’s recommendations.

‘This is another misrepresentation, as the matter was settled before their new test results became known. The department is trying to spin this, knowing that they were in the wrong,’ said William Oosthuizen, the SA Medical Association’s (Sama) legal representative who represented the doctors.

Ramathuba and her head of department ‘acted appallingly and made shocking false statements in order to obtain an interim order against the doctors’, added Oosthuizen.

Attorney Aletta Maree also contested Ramathuba’s media statement that the doctors’ were released because of their negative test results, contending that the MEC was trying to avoid responsibility for legal costs.

Costs are not considered urgent and will be argued after the national lockdown.

Contrary to the department’s claim that it had taken a policy decision to forcibly quarantine all those who tested positive, ‘seven patients were in self-isolation’ at their homes, Maree revealed, according to the DM report.

Meanwhile, her clients – who had mild symptoms and could self-isolate at home – ‘were locked up for 24 hours a day’ in the Modimolle Multi-drug Resistant TB Hospital.

‘This is not quarantine or isolation. This is solitary confinement,’ said Maree.

She also warned Ramathuba against attempting to ‘unduly influence witnesses’, noting that departmental officials had tried to get the doctors’ domestic assistant to ‘contradict our clients’ version of events’.

‘Our clients reserve their rights resulting from their unlawful detention and numerous false claims made in regard to them,’ Maree warned.

Olivier confirmed that she and Williams ‘are considering legal claims following the defamation and false allegations made against us that might affect our careers’.

Full Daily Maverick report