Health Minister Obaddiah Moyo has said coronavirus patients would be named because the pandemic is a contagious and notifiable disease.

This also comes as the number of coronavirus patients continue going up with the number of confirmed cases now at 237 with 31 recoveries and 4 deaths.

However, naming of the patients remains illegal under the Public Health Act. But Moyo said unlike HIV which was in a different category, coronavirus patients had to be named because the disease was contagious.

Heath experts and human rights activists however say that the planned move by Government would violate people’s privacy rights and will only promote stigmatization around the patients.