Zimbabwe's Covid-19 recovery rate improves

ZIMBABWE's Covid-19 recovery rate has improved to 76 percent and hopes are high that the recovery rate will further improve. 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.