HARARE – Zimbabwe on Friday extended the duration of nationwide lockdown measures until Feb. 15 to curtail the further spread of the novel coronavirus.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga delivered a live address on the public Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) on the latest extension of the level-four lockdown.
Chiwenga, who is also the country’s health minister, made the address at the country’s Health Ministry in the capital Harare amid a spike in coronavirus-related deaths and rising infections.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa had imposed a 30-day national lockdown on Jan. 5 after a spike in COVID-19 cases in the country.
Zimbabwe has reported 32,646 coronavirus cases so far and 1,160 deaths due to COVID-19, along with 24,419 recoveries from the disease.
“We have a likelihood of new strains and variants circulating. These strains are more transmissible and infectious. We are doing genomic sequencing to see if these strains are in our environment. Results will be published as soon as we have them,” said Chiwenga.
Chiwenga also noted that the current lockdown had stabilized the situation amid a fall in the number of infections.
High-level fatalities
The lockdown came after four government ministers died of the coronavirus.
In July last year, Perence Shiri, Zimbabwe’s agriculture minister, died of COVID-19.
On Jan. 15, Ellen Gwaradzimba, Zimbabwe’s minister for provincial affairs for Manicaland province, also succumbed to coronavirus, followed in the same week by Morton Malianga, the country’s deputy finance minister in the 1980s.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade Sibusiso Busi Moyo also succumbed to coronavirus on Jan. 20.
Two days later, 81-year-old top historian and former Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere died due to the virus as well.
Transport Minister Joel Biggie Matiza was also killed by COVID-19 soon before Chigwedere.
With travel curtailed by the coronavirus, that luxury is not available, exposing the elite to a truth the majority has long known: Zimbabwe‘s health system has been crumbling for years and is now struggling to cope with a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Anger among overwhelmed medics is adding to broader public dissatisfaction with President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who pledged an economic revival after he took over from Mugabe following a coup in 2017.
“It’s a rude awakening to the government and to the politicians,” said Norman Matara, secretary-general of theZimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights.
“If you have decades of continuously destroying your public health system, and then now you have a pandemic, you cannot then overturn that decay … in one year or in six months.”
Zimbabwe‘s economy was in crisis even before the coronavirus struck, after years of hyperinflation, acute shortages of foreign exchange and power outages.
Now it must cope with a surge in the pandemic. More than half ofZimbabwe‘s 32,646 confirmed COVID-19 cases and two-thirds of its 1,160 deaths were recorded in January alone, according to a Reuters tally.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said on Friday it was likely that more transmissible variants of COVID-19 were now circulating inZimbabwe and the government was investigating.
He said a stricter one-month lockdown that was re-introduced on Jan. 2 and includes a dusk-to-dawn curfew and shutting land borders, would be extended by another two weeks.
Among those who have died in the last few days were two cabinet ministers, a retired general and other high-ranking officials. The two ministers were treated in a private clinic.
A government spokesman sparked uproar on social media this week when he suggested in a tweet that the deaths of ruling party officials may have been the work of “medical assassins.”
He has since apologized and deleted his tweets after health workers pointed out that they had been risking their lives for months to treat patients without adequate protective equipment, ventilators and other vital supplies.
‘MASK UP, STAY AT HOME’
The government says it is doing the best it can with limited resources in an economy that has been in recession since 2019.
Agnes Mahomva, the national COVID-19 taskforce coordinator, told Reuters thatZimbabwe was equipped to handle the second wave and that the government was emphasizing prevention after tightening lockdown rules earlier this month.
“We expected this surge because people had relaxed. Our hospitals are adequately prepared to handle patients but we continue to say ‘mask up and stay at home’. It is the best way to beat COVID-19,” Mahomva said.
The country of 15 million people has 84 working ventilators in public hospitals, and 1,049 beds designated for COVID-19 patients in private and public institutions, according to ministry of health data.
At the state-owned Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, the country’s biggest COVID-19 center with 97 beds, there are two intensive care unit beds and the hospital is nearly full, said Rashida Ferrand, an epidemiologist and physician at the hospital.
Private hospitals, which are better equipped, have less than 15% of the national bed capacity and charge at least $2,000 to admit COVID-19 patients.
Some desperateZimbabweans have turned to social media in search of hospital beds and ventilators for ailing relatives.
DESPAIR
The two cabinet ministers and retired army general, who all died from COVID-19, were buried on Wednesday after being declared national heroes for their role in the 1970s liberation war.
Chiwenga told a crowd of some 300 people at their joint funeral that the virus was ruthless.
“COVID-19 has taught us an important lesson, that we are all mortals. It does not discriminate between the powerful and the weak, the privileged and the deprived, the haves and the have-nots,” said Chiwenga, who wore a mask and face shield.
He is alsoZimbabwe‘s health minister, and has made several trips to China in the last 18 months for an unspecified illness.
“It is a ruthless juggernaut that leaves a trail of despair and desperation,” Chiwenga said, adding that vaccine rollout plans would be announced soon.
Health workers on the frontline fighting the coronavirus say they are demoralized with poor salaries and lack of protective equipment.
Enoch Dongo, president of theZimbabwe Nurses Association, said most nurses worked shifts of up to 12 hours with no gloves, medical gowns or safety shoes and only a single surgical face mask.
“Psychologically, mentally and physically, nurses are traumatized as we speak right now, because they are watching patients die in their care (and) … some of them are avoidable deaths,” said Dongo.
“It’s a wake-up call to everyone, to politicians, to the people ofZimbabwe to the business community, that we need to invest in our health delivery system because … right now, with COVID-19, no one can travel outside the country.”
