By Dr A Shamu Provincial Medical Director -Masvingo

COVID-19 is an infectious disease which is caused by newly discovered strain of coronaviruses.

Normally one acquires this disease through contact with infected surfaces or directly from someone with the disease through coughing, sneezing, talking, shaking of hands and if one touches the mouth, nose or eyes one can be infected.

So mainly we encourage good hygiene (hand washing) so that if you have touched some infected surfaces if you wash your hands with water and soap and then use alcohol based hand sanitizers to disinfect your contaminated hands you will not be infected.

We also encourage social distancing that is a distance which is more than one metre so that if someone sneezes, the chances of getting the infection will be minimized.

The symptoms mainly are fever, dry cough, general body weakness (flu like symptoms)- that is blocked nostrils or running nostrils and coughing. Some can still have headaches.

We advise that if one suspects that he or she has COVID-19 he or she should call our rapid responds teams.

The video was produced during a COVID-19 awareness program supported by Community Tolerance Reconciliation and Development (COTRAD):