INTERCITY travel could be pushing up Covid-19 infections in Bulawayo which saw the Government imposing a lockdown on the province, an official said yesterday.

Following a spike in Covid-19 cases, Cabinet on Tuesday directed the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID) and police to increase surveillance to enforce compliance with Covid-19 regulations for Zupco intercity and intra-urban services.

To date Bulawayo has recorded 6 237 Covid-19 cases including 262 deaths and 5 704 recoveries.

As of Tuesday, Zimbabwe had 42 714 confirmed cases, including 37 288 recoveries and 1 691 deaths.

Cabinet announced that Bulawayo’s Nkulumane, Emakhandeni and northern suburbs’ clinical districts have been placed under the localised lockdown.

Suburbs covered by the Nkulumane clinical district include Nkulumane, Pelandaba, Sizinda, Nketa, Emganwini and Barham Green.

Emakhandeni clinical district covers Cowdray Park, Njube, Luveve, Magwegwe suburbs, Pumula suburbs and Emakhandeni.

The northern suburbs district includes Mpopoma, Mzilikazi, Nguboyenja, Makokoba and the city centre.
Complacency has been blamed for the latest surge in new infections and 95 percent of the cases are due to local transmissions.

In the past five days, the country recorded about 1 639 new Covid-19 cases with a total of 45 deaths up from 209 cases and 12 deaths recorded during the first week of this month.

In an interview, Bulawayo City Council director of health services Dr Edwin Sibanda called for a ban on intercity travel saying authorities were convinced that it was contributing to the increase in Covid-19 cases being recorded in the province.

He said authorities were waiting for communication from the Government to spell out how the localised lockdown will be enforced.

“It will be very difficult to implement a partial lockdown. The best would be to put the whole of Bulawayo on lockdown and reduce intercity travel as we think it is contributing to the upsurge of our cases,” he said.- Chronicle