By Own Correspondent| Zimbabwe has recorded its first recovery case from the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) case, Ministry of Health and Child Care has updated the nation.

Though the ministry did not disclose which patient among the 18 has recovered, the news comes as positive news considering that the country is underfunded and running an uncoordinated response to the global pandemic.

Zimbabwe has begun decentralising COVID-19 testing with machines, reagents and test kits being sent to two cities other than Harare.

Bulawayo has already begun conducting tests with Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital expected to do the same soon.

Confirmatory tests are done at the National Microbiology Reference Laboratory in Harare.

About 45 laboratory workers are getting trained in Bulawayo to handle the testing.

“As part of the decentralisation initiative, we have set up a testing facility at Mpilo. Tests done at Mpilo will be sent to NMRL for confirmation as was done when we used to send our results to South Africa’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in KwaZulu Natal.

“We should be receiving reagents for this testing on April 15, 2020 which is next week.

“These reagents will be used for the Gene Xpert machines we have in our testing facilities.

“We are not going to ending with Mpilo as plans are that every provincial and district hospital should be able to do the testing at sub-national level,” said the Health Ministry.

The testing for the Southern Region samples done at Mpilo begins on Monday when they get more reagents.

The Ministry has designated more sites as isolation facilities.

Every provincial health centre and a local authority health facility will be designated as isolation centres.

“Plumtree High School is now holding 450 Zimbabweans returning from Botswana.