THE Health and Child Care ministry has moved to assure citizens that the current flu wave is not the dreaded COVID-19.

The move is welcome, as it calms the nerves of citizens still traumatised by the pandemic years after it was declared over.

However, reassurance without surveillance is not a health strategy. It is tantamount to public relations.

The country is in the grip of another flu season. Influenza A and B are circulating, chronic conditions are being aggravated and the health system is once again being asked to absorb a surge in patients.

Health and Child Care ministry permanent secretary Aspect Maunganidze says laboratory tests have identified Influenza A and B, with about four influenza-related deaths reported since January.

Government's first instinct was to tell citizens what this is not: COVID-19.

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That message is understandable. COVID-19 traumatised the country and claimed more than 5 000 lives. Nobody wants to relive those dark days, three years after the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 no longer a pandemic.

But "it is not COVID" cannot be the beginning and end of the government's response.

The public deserves more.

Where is the outbreak spreading? How rapidly? Which age groups are being hit hardest? How many severe cases are reaching hospitals? Are intensive-care units under pressure? Are people with asthma, diabetes and other chronic conditions experiencing complications? Have schools become transmission hotspots?

These are the questions that determine whether a health system is ahead of an outbreak or running behind it.

And this is where Zimbabwe must be honest with itself.

As Community Working Group on Health executive director Itai Rusike has pointed out, the country appears to have slipped back into a narrow surveillance posture focused largely on ruling COVID-19 in or out.

That is not good enough.

Zimbabwe spent years building testing capacity, contact-tracing systems and outbreak-response mechanisms because COVID-19 forced it to. Those lessons and capabilities must not be allowed to decay because the pandemic emergency has passed.

Viruses did not retire when COVID-19 stopped dominating the headlines.

Influenza did not disappear. Tuberculosis did not disappear. Antimicrobial resistance did not disappear. And emerging infections certainly did not sign an agreement to give Zimbabwe a break.

Yet every time an outbreak arrives, we are caught at sixes and sevens.

It points to weak surveillance, which leaves the country reacting instead of anticipating.

The consequences of this inaction are too dire to ignore.

When clinicians and patients lack timely information about what is circulating, antibiotics can become the default response even when the illness is viral. That fuels antimicrobial resistance — a slow-burning public-health catastrophe that could eventually make ordinary infections much harder to treat.

Then there is vaccination.

Zimbabwe demonstrated during COVID-19 that it could mobilise vaccination programmes at scale. So why has seasonal influenza vaccination not received anything close to the same sustained attention, particularly for high-risk groups?

We cannot build public-health infrastructure only when the world is watching.

The people most exposed to the consequences of this failure are those least able to withstand another health crisis: children, older people, people with disabilities and those living with chronic illnesses.

For them, weak surveillance can be the difference between getting treatment early and arriving at the hospital too late.

It is someone's grandmother. Someone's child. Someone whose fragile health cannot withstand another infection.

So yes, tell Zimbabweans this is not COVID-19.

But then tell them what it is, where it is going, who is most vulnerable, and what they should do.

That is government's responsibility.

Reassurance calms people down. Surveillance keeps them alive.

This flu wave should, therefore, be a wake-up call, not another annual ritual of reassurance.

The government must strengthen laboratory surveillance, issue clear clinical guidelines, curb inappropriate antibiotic use, develop a credible seasonal influenza vaccination strategy for vulnerable groups and provide the public with timely, useful information.

"Don't panic" is not a plan.

Zimbabweans deserve a health system that watches their backs.