Madam Speaker Ma’am, Robert Mugabe Airport had 6 750 travelers who went through it and 103 of those travelers are under surveillance. Victoria Falls had 1 120 and out those 54 were under surveillance.
In Victoria Falls Road, 291 travelers went through and two of those are under surveillance. Joshua Nqabuko Nkomo 957 and 182 are under surveillance. Then Beitbridge, we had 128 and 31 are under surveillance. Plumtree 151 and six are under surveillance.
On the 13th March, the National Micro-Biology Laboratory tested 14 suspected cases for COVID -19 and all of them were negative. Their samples were also tested at the WHO regional laboratory in South Africa and they came out as negative.
The global picture, there were 153 517 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 5 735 deaths which is a 3,7% case fatality rate and this is reported from 144 countries. Europe has become the epicentre of the pandemic with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world apart from China.
To date, 26 African countries have reported confirmed cases of COVID-19 with four of those countries being SADC Member States, South Africa, Eswathini, Namibia and DRC. Of these, South Africa has reported local spread of COVID-19. The other SADC States have reported imported cases which have largely been imported from Europe.
The country situation, the National Response Mechanism for Surveillance and Early Detection of any possible cases was activated and will remain activated until after the WHO has removed the global health alert. Ministry of Health and Child Care has developed and is implementing the National COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan guided by the eight pillars of WHO Strategic Preparedness and Response Plan.
The budget to meet the plan has since been revised to US$25 million from US$5,2 million. The plan will be used to resource, mobilise from Government, international and development partners. The launch of this plan by His Excellency has been scheduled for tomorrow at 8.30 am at State House.
With South Africa reporting local transmission, preparedness measures have been stepped up through intensifying surveillance at national, provincial and district level with special focus on mandatory screening at all our ports of entry throughout the country. Some of the measures include the updating of the response plan providing daily written updates from the borders and also from the Permanent Secretary’s office.
All hospitals have been put on high alert. SOPs have been prepared and we are ready with all those for self-isolation, surveillance, rapid response teams and so on. The scaling up of the risk communication and community engaged through the electronic and print media has also been scaled up and printed materials to be circulated to all rural areas. Training of all health workers with technical support from WHO is being carried out. Work is in progress to strengthen the capacity of identifying more isolation centres besides Wilkins and Thorngrove hospitals.
Last week, we met with the Global Fund Executive Director to discuss funding for the Covid-19 preparedness and response activities. The Global Fund has committed 5% of the US$500 million from the Global Fund grant to Zimbabwe. This works out to US$25 million.
We are also grateful to the UK Ambassador who called in to have a meeting with us. Mrs Melanie Robinson and the United Kingdom has committed additional support to our Government to a total of £1,7 million. The World Health Organisation has also provided technical support to the Ministry’s Preparedness and Response Plan.
We have also had support from China and they have successfully been able to give us money for the renovations of our Wilkins Hospital and they will be moving to Thorngrove Hospital as well.
Confirmatory tests kits have also been procured and we have also received donations of the same from the WHO, Africa CDC, United Kingdom Government and the Chinese Government. Rapid diagnostic test kits have also been procured.
The training of doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists and environmental health officers continues. This also includes the uniformed forces. Identification of additional potential isolation facilities and additional isolation wings to the existing public health institutions is in progress.
Treasury support for strengthening and intensifying surveillance; Treasury has released RTG$20 million. Additionally, Treasury has released a provision of US$250 thousand. This has been set aside …
Part of the preparedness is identification of a company to assist in border control and contact tracing. I was so happy to hear that Parliament is adjourning because definitely like the Hon. Member has indicated, this room is a disastrous area where we can have an easy spread of the virus in seconds….
Risk allowances for personnel working at isolation facilities is also being organised; modification of the quarantine and isolation facilities; personal protective equipment including disease control suits and laboratory supplies is what this money from Treasury is going to be used for.
It must be emphasised however, that there is a huge demand and competition for personal protective equipment. All the countries are fighting for this small number of equipment which is available but we continue to explore ways of expediting these and engage local industry to explore possibilities of local production of some of the personal protective equipment including masks, gowns and hand sanitisers.
Cabinet also with immediate effect adopted the following;
1. Implementation of the social distancing measures, for example suspension of mass gatherings as the Independence Day Celebration and ZITF which were scheduled for Bulawayo.
2. Immediate suspension of all gatherings of more than 100 people including church gatherings, weddings, burial ceremonies for a period of 60 days.
3. Travelers from high risk countries with widespread on going local transmission to be strongly discouraged from travelling to Zimbabwe for the next period of 30 days starting tomorrow.
4. All airlines to be advised of the restrictions.
5. Discouraging Zimbabweans from traveling to and through high risk affected countries.
6. Item surveillance including Covid-19 testing of people arriving from high risk countries.
7. Non-essential travel to be discouraged by all sectors and individuals.
8. Continue to institute precautionary measures of personal hygiene like frequent hand washing with soap followed by use of an alcohol base sanitiser.
9. Avoidance of unnecessary hand shaking or unnecessary physical contact with others.
10. Ensure hygiene standards are maintained at high levels by shopping centres, public offices and buildings including Parliament.
The declaration of the pandemic was done by His Excellency as a national disaster. We are also looking at the launching of the plan itself which I said will be held tomorrow. The plan includes the eight pillars as stated by the World Health Organisation and includes coordination; planning and monitoring; risk communication and community engagement; surveillance, rapid response and case investigation; the points of entry; the national laboratory; infection prevention; control case management; operational support and logistics.
Madam Speaker, this is my report, my update for today. I thank you.
We publish below the statement by the family of the late 30 year old journalist and son to businessman James who became the first prominent person to succumb to coronavirus, Zororo Makamba.
Below is the full Makamba family statement made to the Daily News on the death of businessman James Makamba’s son, Zororo, who was a broadcaster.
In the report, Health Minister Obadiah Moyo allegedly demanded $120,000 upfront which the family did not have. This led to his untimely death. Efforts to get a comment from the minister at the time of writing were fruitless as his phone was not answered.
His elder brother Tawanda Makamba said:
Zororo was in New York for 20 days and when he came back he had a slight flue, a cold. He then went to his general practitioner and they checked him for coronavirus symptoms and they said he didn’t have them at the time.
He was just told that he had a cough and flu because in New York it’s cold and here it’s hot, so they then treated him for flue and he came back home.
On Friday last week, he started developing a fever and his doctor recommended that he had to be admitted. This is because Zororo had a tumour removed from just under his left lung last year in November and he was under an 18-month recovery time-frame.
His immune system was already compromised, so the doctor was very keen that he gets into the hospital and receives proper medication to help him get over the flu and fever.
He was further advised to go to Wilkins Hospital to test for the coronavirus. He arrived at Wilkins Hospital by 10 am and samples were collected from him and we were told that the results would be in after 6 hours.
After 6 hours there were no results and his general practitioner called to find out why the results had not been availed yet. The hospitals’ officials then told the GPA that they had not run the tests yet they were waiting for samples from provincial hospitals to run them all at once.
The doctor got frustrated and started questioning why they had not run the test given that Zororos’ condition was deteriorating after some time did they decided to run the tests and in the meantime, we took him home and he needed oxygen.
His GPA phoned around and an ambulance came home to deliver the oxygen and then we got the positive results for coronavirus at about 1:30 or 2 a.m. the following day.
They told us that they had confirmed that he had the virus he had to be taken to the Wilkins Hospital for treatment.
We then inquired if we could bring him immediately and we were told that the hospital was not ready to admit him. He ended up being admitted around 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.
His doctor made it clear earlier on that he had to be on a ventilator because he could not breathe.
However, when we got at Wilkins Hospital there was no ventilator, no medication and even the oxygen would run out and they had to get it from the City of Harare.
After that, we ran around to find a ventilator for him and we managed to get a portable ventilator from a family friend who had a relative who used the ventilator before he died.
In terms of medicine you need to breathe, they didn’t have it there, we had to go and buy it in South Africa.! We ended up finding some today (yesterday)just as he was passing away at a local pharmacy, yet the hospital was telling us it was not locally available.
We then brought the ventilator on Sunday by 2 pm and when we got here because the portable ventilator had an American plug, they told us to get an adapter because they only had round sockets at the hospital.
I then rushed to buy an adapter and came back and they never used it and when I asked why they were not using the ventilator they said they had no sockets in his room. So they didn’t have medication, ventilators and we brought them a ventilator and they didn’t have sockets in his room. I told them that I had an extension cord and pleaded with them to use the cord, but they refused.
They forced us to come here but failed to deliver on their promise. When Zororo had his operation, he had it at Health Point Clinic. I contacted the people at Health Point and asked if they were willing to take Zororo in and they said yes and that they had already set up a facility to accommodate him.
We then appealed to Health minister Obadiah Moyo that since you are not prepared at Wilkins Hospital can we take him to Health Point and he refused.
Minister Moyo said we could not take him there and that needed to be treated at Wilkins. We were puzzled and wondered how he could say that Zororo should be treated at Wilkins when they don’t even have plugs in his room to connect the ventilator.
He promised us all sorts of things that this morning (yesterday) they would definitely be a ventilator and equipment but nothing materialised. If you go inside there you will see that they are not prepared to handle cases this side.
The minister at some point also suggested that we could take him to a trauma centre in Borrowdale. When it was now time for us to go to Borrowdale trauma they refused us to go there.
Instead, they got the owner of Borrowdale Trauma Centre to call me and he told me that he could come and set up an ICU at Wilkins for Zororo complete with a ventilator and monitors, but he said that we had to pay US$120 000 for the equipment.
He added that once Zororo finishes using the equipment and recovers we had to donate the equipment to Wilkins Hospital. So basically the hospital wanted us to buy the equipment for them. We don’t have US$120 000 and it is not our responsibility to buy equipment for the government.
On top of that, remember this is a critical patient, nurses would only visit him after two hours because they were afraid of handling his situation.
We had to phone from home, calling the nurse station to tell them that Zororo was in distress and that his oxygen was finished because they were not going to check on him.
It even got to a point where they were telling us that we are bothering them but Zororo was struggling.
On top of that, remember this is a critical patient, nurses would only visit him after two hours because they were afraid of handling his situation.
We had to phone from home, calling the nurse station to tell them that Zororo was in distress and that his oxygen was finished because they were not going to check on him.
It even got to a point where they were telling us that we are bothering them but Zororo was struggling in there. My mother and his fiancé have been parked out here for the past two days and they wouldn’t allow us to come in.
The minister lied to us on many occasions. He lied to us that they were going to bring equipment and doctors but nothing ever materialised.
We reached out to President Emmerson Mnangagwa and First Lady Auxilia Mnangagwa who transferred to Beatrice and that there was a room for him. Nothing came out of this.
We even appealed to them saying that if they have failed then they should allow us to take him home and treat him ourselves because really what he needed was oxygen.
At the end, before he died, he kept telling us that he was alone and scared and the staff was refusing to help him to a point where he got up and tried to walk out and they were trying to restrain him.
So this is how my younger brother ended up dying. I want people to know that the government is lying.
Remember at some point I spoke to the president and he was saying that the report he received about Wilkins from the Health Minister is that there is equipment and medicine.
However, right now they don’t even have water at Wilkins. So if you come here to be treated for corona there is absolutely no treatment you will get, you will die.
Tam not a healthcare giver but I have respect for nurses and doctors. The doctor we were in contact with here at Wilkins would turn off his phone yet he was the critical contact person, the nurses also refused to help us.
So people need to know that the government is ill-prepared, it is not ready to deal with this virus.
Right now we have been outside since 12pm and they have not given us his body, neither have they told us the way forward
.
Zororo passed away between 11am and 12pm today (yesterday) and the hospital called us to come and look at his body.
When we got there, we were, however, told that they had already put his body in a body bag and taken it to the mortuary.
Until now at 5pm we have been waiting for further communication and they have not even given us any of his belongings.
This is such a heart-breaking experience for us and it goes to show the lack of seriousness our government has in dealing with the coronavirus.