Last month the rate was as low as 54 percent when the
country lost more lives than what it lost between March and December last year.
The recovery rate on Saturday was at 76,2 percent and 489 recoveries were
recorded countrywide.
The Ministry of Health and Child care says as of Saturday,
there were 108 hospitalised Covid-19 positive patients. Of those admitted, five
are in intensive care units.
“As at 30 January 2021, Zimbabwe had 33 273 confirmed
cases, including 25 361 recoveries and 1 193 deaths,” said the Ministry.
Health experts have maintained that prevention measures for
Covid-19 remain unchanged and it is up to people to act responsibly so that the
spread of the killer disease is contained. Among the basic self-protection
measures, people are urged to avoid unnecessary movements and stay at home.
If they have emergencies and have to go out, they should
properly wear masks, keep a social distance of up to one metre, wash hands
regularly and continually sanitise surfaces and hands
In a statement on Saturday, Acting President and Health and
Child Care Minister Dr Constantino Chiwenga said the recovery rate had greatly
improved.
While giving an update on the Covid-19 induced lockdown, Dr
Chiwenga said that Government will soon be bringing in vaccines against the
pandemic, with a roll out plan and deployment strategy being finalised.
“In a bid to curtail the spread of the virus, the
Government has also extended the level 4 National Lockdown which started early
January to February 15 amid fears of new Covid-19 variants in the country. Even
though the numbers we are losing to the pandemic are falling, we bemoan the
fact that Zimbabweans are dying at all. Any death is one death too many,” he
said.
“The level 4 National Lockdown that came into force on the
5th of January 2021 has stabilised our situation. In relative terms and since
the lockdown, the number of infections have been decreasing substantially.
Equally, our recovery rate has gone up from an all-time low of 54 percent to 75
percent.”
This comes as the country recorded a decline in Covid-19
cases last week as of Friday with 1 945 weekly new cases as compared to 4 126
in the previous week.
Statistics from the Ministry show that last week the day
with the highest number of new infections was on Tuesday with 358 cases.
Multiple variants of the virus that causes Covid-19 have
been documented globally and experts are researching whether the new variants
are causing severe symptoms and more deaths.
Last month, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa,
Chairperson of the African Union, announced that the African Union had secured
a provisional 270 million Covid-19 vaccine doses on behalf of its member
states, through advance procurement commitment guarantees of up to US$2 billion
to the manufacturers by the African Export-Import Bank.
This was a remarkable milestone in efforts to ensure
equitable access to the vaccine for Africa’s people.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says cases in its
Africa region which excludes Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Djibouti
and Somalia have been increasing since the middle of September.
It added that “steeper increases have been observed since
late November. “ WHO has since urged African nations to boost their
surveillance of the virus to detect any mutations that may occur.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says
one of these variants, originally detected in early October in neighbouring
South Africa, shares some mutations with the variant detected in the UK.
There have been cases caused by the variant outside of
South Africa and this variant seems to spread easier and quicker than other
variants which experts say could be causing the upsurge of cases in Zimbabwe.
Chronicle
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