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NewsDay

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Editorial Comment: Zim needs new COVID-19 strategy

Opinion & Analysis
IN recent weeks, government has been putting various towns and cities under localised lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus, as the country is clearly losing the fight as the third wave takes hold around the country. 

IN recent weeks, government has been putting various towns and cities under localised lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus, as the country is clearly losing the fight as the third wave takes hold around the country.

Last week, districts in Mashonaland West and Masvingo provinces were put under strict localised lockdowns, following the imposition of similar restrictions in Kwekwe, Karoi and Hurungwe.

Most suburbs in the second capital, Bulawayo, have also been put under localised lockdowns as the situation continues to deteriorate.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed Zimbabwe’s poorly resourced healthcare system, glaring gaps in staffing, poor infrastructure, management systems, poor morale among the overworked personnel and weak control mechanisms among many others.

Poor staffing is an age-old problem, not only in Zimbabwe, but across Africa as the West and other developed nations have poached critical skills by offering better remuneration and retirement packages, or as personnel simply opted for functional economies.

The COVID-19 third wave  is exacerbating all the deficiencies in our health value chain. At the weekend, we reported that Zimbabwe’s main referral health centre, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, had ordered doctors to reduce normal admissions and discharge patients deemed as stable to create space for COVID-19 patients following a surge in infections.

The country has an estimated infrastructural gap of over 7 000 hospital beds. With limited resources, this gap will not be easy to bridge, but this can be blamed on government’s slow response to the crisis or lack of understanding of how long and how much damage the virus could cause and quickly mitigating the potential dangers.

Zimbabwe’s number of new infections rose from 544 to 1 239, an increase of 127%. Figures from last week show a frightening growth in the number of new cases: 766 on Wednesday, 826 on Thursday, 911 on Friday and 801 on Saturday. In the 10 days to Saturday, the country saw 6 166 new cases.

The new lockdown restrictions in mostly rural communities show that those areas, once considered safe, are at great risk, and it is unlikely that local health services will be able to cope.

Zimbabwe, at present, has a severe shortage of vaccines and is unlikely to meet its target of inoculating 60% of its population without acquiring more jabs. The country is expecting about 2,5 million vaccines from China next week.

On Saturday, the country took delivery of 500 000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from China.

Clearly, the country needs a new strategy in its fight against the virus, one that recognises our shortcomings and specifically target to address them and strengthen the primary healthcare system. Funding, remuneration and creating a healthy working environment for the frontline workers has to be at the heart of such a policy.

Government also needs to work on creating awareness among the population of the dangers posed by the virus in the short to long term.