DOCTORS have warned that positive cases of the deadly
coronavirus in the country are set to rise sharply in the final days of the
current lockdown, as the disease will have blossomed locally by then, the Daily
News reports.
This comes as the government has admitted it has not done enough so far to combat the
spread of the lethal virus in the country.
It also comes as there are growing calls for President
Emmerson Mnangagwa to extend the current 21-day national lockdown, to allow for
more testing for Covid-19 across the country.
The secretary of the Zimbabwe Association for Human Rights
Doctors (ZAHRD), Norman Matara told the Daily News at the weekend that the
total number of people who have contracted the virus in the country — which
currently stands at 14, after just 547 tests — was likely to rise significantly
in the coming days.
He said this was because the maximum incubation period for
the virus — which is the time it takes before it becomes fully blown — was
about 21 days.
“Taking a cue from global trends, the figures should start
to rise exponentially before it reaches its peak, given that we are entering
the final week of the 21-day lockdown.
“Going forward, the graph is expected to start flattening
and eventually fall. However, the fact that we are not doing enough testing
makes it difficult to tell what will happen, because we may be misled by the
figures.
“We wait to see what the coming week has in store,” Matara
told the Daily News.
On his part, the
secretary-general of the Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA), Arron
Musara, said the country had not done enough testing for the virus to correctly
project the extent of infections.
“Our biggest challenge is that the surveillance and contact
tracking has not been robust, if we consider the number of tests being done per
day, where we have had no tests on some days.
“This confirms our inability to catch the disease. We are
certainly not out of trouble … because the figures could increase in the coming
weeks.
“The government should consider extending the lockdown,
while at the same time taking into consideration our economic circumstance,”
Musara said.
“This is something they must seriously look into because
honestly, we are in trouble,” he added. The deputy minister
of Health and Child Care, John Mangwiro, said the government was working on a
mapping scenario and would soon release its findings.
“A team of our health experts are still compiling the data,
and we will make it public as soon as this is through,” he said.
Government spokesperson Nick Mangwana warned there were
huge challenges ahead, urging people to heed the lockdown measures.
“As we ramp-up our testing, the number of #Covid19Zim
positive cases keeps creeping up. Out of 547 tests, we have now recorded 14
positive cases and three deaths.
“As curves elsewhere are flattening, we are not out of the
woods. #SocialDistancing has helped flatten the curve elsewhere,” he said on
twitter.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the
incubation period for the virus can be as long as 24 days, although the average
is about three days.
The WHO also says a very long incubation period could
reflect double exposure. Daily News
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