Zimbabwe will fail to meet its ambitious target of collecting 40 000 samples for Covid-19 testing because of the delayed of personal protective equipment (PPE), health minister Obadiah Moyo has said.  

The Zimbabwean government had announced that it would test 40 000 samples by the end of April but by Tuesday, had tested just over 5 000 samples.

Moyo said the PPEs had since been delivered and going forward they were targeting 2 000 samples per day.

He said they had trained samplers who will collect samples across the country.

“We had challenges with PPE but they have been delivered and are there. We have put a system to test 2000 samples a day and have come out with composite teams to go out to collect as many samples as possible,” he said.

He said with everything in place, the exercise should be smooth flowing.

“PPEs have been distributed to all centres right round the provinces in Zimbabwe so the programme is proceeding with ease. We will see how much we will be able to collect, we want to see how much we will be able to collect on a daily basis,” said Moyo.