By A Correspondent- Government is placing all its citizens’ lives in grave danger by reducing the period for mandatory COVID-19 quarantine from the initial 21 days to 7 days, an opposition party has said.
LEAD President Linda Masarira blasted the move by government to reduce quarantine days saying it was inspired by lack of political will to fight the coronavirus pandemic and not lack of resources as claimed by authorities.
Health and Child Care Minister Obadiah Moyo said late Tuesday that Zimbabwe does not have the resources to continue following the two-week quarantine period for people entering the country. Moyo said the Cabinet had therefore decided to reduce the quarantine period to seven days, against World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.
Masarira said that the decision by Government to reduce mandatory quarantine for its returning citizens spells doom for the already struggling health care sector, considering that Zimbabwe has a huge chunk of citizens wishing to return home from some of coronavirus hotspots such as the UK, US and South Africa.
She said:
“As Labour Economists and Afrikan Democrats (LEAD) we have been disappointed by the new government position to reduce quarantine period to eight days which is even an infraction of the World Health Organization guidelines.
“We are now questioning the sincerity of government in dealing with this Corona virus pandemic and what has made them to violate WHO recommendations when our country’s health sector is in shambles.
In announcing the decision, government cited lack of resources and funding to finance the quarantine. Every responsible and or progressive mind can easily foresee the fact that in reality government is not actually in short of supplies to follow reasonable procedures in the bid to combat the spread of coronavirus but what simply lacks is the will and maybe our presiding officers have decided to play the devil’s advocate by putting citizens life on the firing line.”
Zimbabwe has been pinning its hopes of fighting the pandemic on donations sourced from local businesses and the Chinese nationals, but health experts believe these are still not enough unless Government itself chips in. But Government resources are already depleted, and the traditional cash cow during winter, the tobacco industry, has been wrong-footed by the virus.
“At a time when the whole world is busy battling with the fight to outwit the COVID-19 our Zimbabwean government has not been spared from the battle experiencing an increase in cases of the deadly pandemic when her own health system is almost close to dead,” said Masarira.
“When the government announced it’s decision to extend the unconditionally imposed lockdown progressive minds welcomed the move.
“This brings on the table suspicion of probable revilement of funds considering the amount of monies in donations that the government has received so far from both the corporate world and well wishers from abroad.
“At some point the government issued a statement commending farmers who volunteered their boom sprays to be used as disinfectants, other donations in excess of one million face masks among other items and treasury itself on March 30 claimed to have availed Z$500 million and also redirected the 2020 budget towards the Covid-19 fight.”
Masarira urged the Government to reconsider its decision in the interest of saving lives, in light of fears by global epidemiology experts that Africa could become the next epicentre of the coronavirus.
“In light of all the above LEAD hereby urges the government to consider implications of their decisions on the lives of the ordinary citizens before misfiring like this. Zimbabwe currently faces the threat of more Covid-19 cases due to increase in population of citizens returning from such places like UK who have a higher probability of impurity.
“This in itself poses long term uncontrollable threats considering the level of corruption which makes those with government links immune to government orders thus free passage and movement once they are out of quarantine centers.”
WHO warned that in the last seven days, case of coronavirus rose 43% in Africa, further showing that transmissions are now at the deadly communal stage rather than imported.
Africa has a “very, very limited” and “very, very strained” testing capacity, John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said in his weekly briefing on Thursday.
It means that the surge in infections on the continent is likely to be even higher in reality, he said.
African governments reported nearly 26,000 cases as of Thursday, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, up from just over 16,000 a week ago.
Although those figures are still relatively small in the global picture, the sharp increase is a cause for concern, said Mr Nkengasong. The previous week saw an increase of 29%.
Zimbabwe, currently in the first week of a two-week lockdown extension, has had 29 cases of the coronavirus, including four deaths and two recoveries.