By Nomusa Garikai- I have listened to President Mnangagwa’s address to the nation three times and still failed to understand what understand the purpose. Yes, the number of corona virus cases have increased significantly these last two weeks but is he saying the lockdown conditions are gone shot back up to level 4 or are we still at level 2?
What is the purpose of the 6 pm to 6 am nationwide curfew?
“At least 21 Cimas Medical Aid Society staffers tested Covid-19 positive at the High Glen Clinic in Harare forcing the temporary closure of the health centre Sunday,” reported New Zimbabwe.
“In its Covid-19 update bulletin, Cimas chief executive (CEO) Vulindela Ndlovu confirmed the development and said a receptionist had tested positive for Covid-19 last Thursday following a routine and random testing of staff.
“The CEO said contact tracing and testing subsequently revealed that other staff members had been exposed to the virus as they were in the same work area with the receptionist.”
The report underlines one of the greatest weaknesses in Zimbabwe’s handling of the corona virus – the failure to test, trace and track aggressively, especially at local community level. The very fact that so many individuals tested positive, especially from a health service institution shows the folly of not testing aggressively.
All the country’s major clinics and hospitals should be testing all covid-19 suspects as a matter of course. One had hoped the President was going to announce measures designed to ramp up the testing regime.
Without testing aggressively, the country will not have the data to address the corona virus. We are just shooting in the dark!
Zimbabwe’s health care service is poorly equipped, poorly staffed and poorly resourced; it provided a zero-star services, at best, before the corona virus outbreak. The service will be stretched beyond its limits with the admission of just a few covid-19 patients. It is therefore shocking that government has failed to resolve the dispute with the health care workers, including paying them a living wage and the provision of PPE, and thus depriving the nation of even the skeleton health care cover at the very time the virus cases are soaring!
How ironic that the country is ramping up its response to the soaring corona virus cases by deploying Police, Army and CIO to every corner of the country, armed to the teeth, to impose dusk to dawn curfew but has no health care worker or equipment to do something even as basic as check the covid-19 patient’s temperature!
For Pete’s sake, what we need is nurses and medicine, not soldiers and guns. Even now, at this the 59th minute of 11th hour, before the corona virus storm overwhelms us all; our leaders still to do have the common sense to do the obvious thing, the common sense thing!