"HARARE Thursday recorded its first COVID-19 recovery after four patients on treatment and isolation tested negative of the virus, bringing the national figure of recoveries to nine, the Health Ministry announced Friday morning," reported New Zimbabwe.
So, the ministry has carried out the usual 1 000 or so tests on suspected covid-19 cases including a number returnees in isolation centres, those with covid-19 like symptoms and the four above. The results were all negative!
But why is the government not telling us how many tests were carried out, where, on what group of people, etc. For the last eight days now government has pointedly refused to give any details on the tests carried out – assuming it is still testing! What is there to hid? Hiding information is something of Zanu PF mastery.
In the July 2018 elections ZEC claimed that Mnangagwa won the elections. Everyone else who observed the elections dismissed the whole process as a farce.
“The final results as announced by the Electoral Commission contained numerous errors and lacked adequate traceability, transparency and verifiability,” the EU Election Observer Mission final report stated.
Just to prove the point, ZEC’s own affidavit in the Constitutional Court gave three different vote tallies for Mnangagwa and admitted it did not have all the V11 forms, the summary of vote count in each of the over 11 000 Polling Stations and hence the different totals. So even ZEC could not verify and trace where its figures came from!
“As such, many aspects of the 2018 elections in Zimbabwe failed to meet international standards,” concluded the EU report.
Rigging the July 2018 elections has been a disaster for the nation because it confirmed Zimbabwe was still a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs; just as it was under Mugabe. The investors and lenders, tired of dealing with pariah states, continued to shy away.
The price for rigging the covid-19 data is that the virus will continue to spread. Indeed, the spread will be even faster and wider because people who would other take extra precautions such as washing hands, wearing PPE, etc. around a covid-19 infected person will not do so because they did not know. So many, many more people will be infected with the virus, hundreds of thousands will suffer and will die!
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I know one senior company manager who was tasked to have the company's employees tested for covid-19, in response to the government's demand that only companies with a work force that has been tested will be allowed to reopen. 50 or so of the company's workers were tested and two were found to be covid-19 positive.
The tests were carried out on 6 May 2020 and the results were given to the company the following day 7 May and a copy of the results was send to the relevant government authorities. The company informed the two affected individuals and instructed them to go into self-isolation and what they should do if they condition should get worse. They were also told their covid-19 status had been passed on to government authorities together with their personal details. They will probably hear from the authorities in due course.
As last night, 9 May 2020, no one from government had contacted the two workers. There was no effort to track from where, when and how the two had got the covid-19 infection and to who else they might have passed the virus!
As of the 8 May Zimbabwe still boasted that it had no new covid-19 cases. Last night, 9 May government reported that they had been one new covid-19 case, giving a total of 35. This afternoon the number had gone up to 36 according to the Coronavirus Johns Hopkins web site.
Many companies have tested their employees in response to the government's instructions and so one expected the number of tests per day to go up way above the 1 000 or so government target but failed to meet. With the increased number of test one expected the number of positives to go up!
Why is government not aggressively tracking those who have the virus and test their conducts?
There is no doubt that this Zanu PF regime is deliberately keeping the nation in the dark as to the seriousness of this covid-19 pandemic. The regime is obsessed about its image as a competent government and knows that reports of soaring virus cases and deaths will soil its image.
The company manager has made arrangements to ensure the two company employees have everything they need through out the self-isolation and has told the workers they must call him if they should ever want anything or their health condition gets worse. He knows that government should step in to test the two's family and contacts but knows there is very little he can do to push the regime to do anything.
Zanu PF is falsifying the covid-19 cases and deaths to hid the regime's blundering incompetence and the nation is already paying dearly for this foolishness because the virus is indeed spreading far and wide!
An acute shortage of buses has hampered the fast movement of Zimbabweans repatriated from South Africa with some of the returnees stuck in Beitbridge for the past two days despite having completed formalities to travel to provincial quarantine centres.
Last week 527 border jumpers ejected from South Africa, but arrived at the border post aboard nine buses were yet to be taken to their provinces.
Zimbabwe expects thousands of its citizens who over the years sought economic and political refuge in South Africa but are now being forced back by Covid-19-induced job losses and worldwide uncertainty.
This is really a nightmare! These returnees are being taken to quarantine centres because they MIGHT have the corona virus. But the chaotic and unhygienic condition they are being transported around and living in ever since their arrival are such that if one of them has the virus then by the end of the quarantine period he/she would have passed it on to many others!
It is an outrage that this government has a bloated Police, Army and CIO, well paid and well equipped and yet has failed to deploy all this human and material resources to make such quarantine centres have something as basic as clean running water!
Zanu PF's blundering incompetence has been a milestone round our necks this nation has had to carry these last 40 years. The economic, social and humanitarian challenges brought about by the covod-19 pandemic has left even well organised and rich nations reeling. Zimbabwe will have to face the covid-19 challenges, just like everyone else, and the last thing the nation wants is to do so headed by a blundering and incompetent government.
Zimbabwe must off-load this corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF regime now or else the country will sink into even greater depths of economic poverty and hopelessness. Zanu PF is a serious hinderance to the nation's fight for survival!
Matemadanda: If You Don’t Salute Mnangagwa As President, You’ll Go Hungry.
Zanu PF has been in power these last 40 years and the country has lost its cherished accolade as the breadbasket of he region. Since Mugabe seized the farms to give them to Zanu PF loyalists like Matemadanda the nation has relied on food aid! Command agriculture has only encourage those with the farms to hang-on to the farms and use them as cover to loot.
Mnangagwa rigged the July 2018 elections and only because MDC sold-out during the GNU and failed to implement even one reform.
Zimbabweans are starving right now. Zanu PF's blundering incompetence is making the economic and humanitarian crisis brought about by covid-19 even worse! The prospect of retaining this regime in power one more day is a nightmare! Zanu PF must go for the sake of the country's survival!
SA did not need to ban these returnees because many of them will not survive the ordeal they are facing right now. They are being taken into quarantine centres because it is feared some of them might have covid-19 and yet if just one of them has the virus by the end of the quarantine several of them will have the virus too. There is no attempt at the usual physical distancing and the hygienic conditions in the quarantine centres are so bad the centres are covid-19 hotspots in their own right!
The real shock is Zimbabweans themselves are doing nothing to end this insanity! They will pay dearly for their folly!
Zimbabwe is falsifying the number of corona virus cases and deaths, playing the same game China played and for the same reason - to give the impression the regime has the outbreak under control. At least China mounted an effective lockdown to contain the virus, mobilized the resources to test, track and treat all infected individuals. Zimbabwe has done nothing to stamp out the virus and with the coming cold weather there is a real danger the number of infected people will soar and the regime will not be able to falsify the figures then.
We are in serious trouble! It is bad enough to have a corrupt and incompetent government during normal times, to have such a government during a existential threat as covid-19 is a nightmare!
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