"Sadly, I too tested positive for the Covid-19 virus. This virus is real and we need to fight it by following the guidelines that our Government has given us which is in line with the WHO regulations," said Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Deputy Minister Vangelis Peter Haritatos.
Deputy Minister Haritatos, you were tested for covid-19 as soon as you suspected of catching the virus; possibly as soon as you learned your boss, the late Minister Perrance Shiri had the virus.
Do you know that there are hundreds of thousands of frontline workers, like nurses and doctors, who work with covid-19 patients without the recommended WHO PPE, not even the most basic face mask?
Deputy Minister, do you also know that WHO has recommended that frontline corona virus workers must be tested on regular bases? In Zimbabwe, many of the nurses and doctors let alone the ordinary people with the corona virus symptoms, are not being tested.
As soon as you learned you had the corona virus, you went into isolation to protect your family and friends. Has it ever occurred to you that all those poor Zimbabweans who have the virus but don’t know it because they are denied a US$6 test would too want to go into isolation to protect their family and friends?
Zimbabwe has carried out a total of 145 000 tests as of the end of July, that is 1 in 110 people tested. Compared to SA that has done 3 million tests which 1 in 20. This is contrary to the WHO clarion call to “Test! TEST!! TEST!!!”
There is a sinister reason why Zanu PF is not testing aggressively, at least not testing povo. The regime is hiding its blundering incompetence in the handling of the pandemic by sweeping the grime reality under the carpet.
Zimbabwe’s confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths is one of the lowest per capita in the world. Whilst other nations have earned the accolade by stamping out the virus Zimbabwe is cheating. Of course, if you do not test you will keep the confirmed cases and deaths very low.
The price of not testing is that many, many infected people who should be in isolation remain in the community spreading the virus far and wide. It is the povo, not the ruling elite, who are paying with their suffering and deaths for Zimbabwe’s rigged corona virus statistics!
Zanu PF is blatantly rigging the corona virus statistics, just as the regime has rigged the country’s elections, with the usual callous indifference to tragic suffering and deaths the spreading corona virus is causing to the ordinary people. Deputy Minister Haritatos, please, please spare us the your insulting lies that this Zanu PF government’s criminal negligence and dereliction of duty to save lives is what WHO ordered
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Nonsense!
Deputy Minister, do you know there many health care workers who work with corona virus patients all the time and were promised that they would be given top priority for regular tests but are yet to be tested?
And yet, the minute you suspected you might have contracted the virus, you were tested and went into isolation. No doubt all your family and friends have all been tested a few times already, just to be absolutely certain they are free of the virus.
Zimbabwe has only carried out 145 000 tests in five months, one of the lowest in the world. There are hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans who, like you Deputy Minister, would happily go into isolation to protect their family and friends if only they were not deliberately kept in the dark because government denied them a US$6 test!
Zanu PF is following WHO guidelines in protecting the ruling elite from corona virus infection but is flouting the guidelines when it comes to protecting the ordinary Zimbabweans. The regime is falsifying the corona virus figures to hide the growing evidence of the virus spreading, a mark of the regime’s blundering incompetence in the handling of the pandemic.
The corona virus pandemic is the greatest challenge the world has ever faced since the Second World War. Corona virus is a double edged sword the virus as cause serious health problems and many have died and, with the second cut, cause serious disruption of economic activities many people will be facing poverty induced hardships for a decade or more to come.
Zimbabwe, given its economy was already is a serious mess and its health care service all but collapse at the on set of the pandemic, was doomed to be one of the countries to pay dearly on both the health front and economic front. But by having one of the most corrupt and incompetent government post the pandemic has made the situation even worse for there is no doubt that Zanu PF's blundering incompetence is aiding in the spread of the virus.
I totally agree that we, the people of Zimbabwe, are our own worst enemy in having accepted this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship for 40 years and counting. There were a few opportunities to end the dictatorship, notably during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, and we wasted them all. Yeah up! We do like being led by the nose like a bull at the market and have paid dearly for our folly!
Zimbabwe is facing very serious economic challenges of reviving the country's comatose economy, made worse now by the corona virus, serious challenge of ending the rampant corruption, serious health care service challenges given the collapse health sector, etc., etc. We have failed to deal with any of these problems because we are stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical regime that has no clue what to do so solve any of the problems but will not allow anyone else to try!
Have you harvested the wheat yet? Then why are you saying Chiwenga got it right before you have seen the results!
In a statement today the Ministry said schools remain closed until further notice.
"Contrary to misleading social media reports that schools will reopen on 2 September 2020 or 15 September 2020 for examination classes, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education would like to reiterate to its valued stakeholders that the Government deferred the re-opening of schools until further notice," reads part of the statement.
"Government is currently in widespread consultations and will only announce any schools re-opening date once Cabinet has taken a position.
If one was to believe government’s official confirmed covid 19 cases and deaths then school should have restarted months ago. The real figures are much worse as we would know if government was testing as aggressively as it should. Re-opening schools with covid-19 numbers soaring will be foolish!
Zanu PF has 40 years and counting experience of blatantly rigging elections and getting away with it. It is clear the party is putting its wealth of experience in rigging the corona virus data.
President Ramaphosa in SA is already under growing pressure because of that country's growing figures of confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths. Zimbabwe's figures are equally bad in reality but officially it is the exact opposite, Zimbabwe has contained the pandemic better than even the many of the developed nations with all their economic wealth, five star health care, etc. All lies, of course!
So far, at least, Zanu PF is getting away with rigging the covid-19 data. How Zimbabweans still believe only 151 people across the country have died of covid-19 since March when a chat with any one familiar with the going on at any of the major hospitals will show that same number of people with covid-19 symptoms died in one major hospital in the last month!
How anyone can be so naive and gullible as to believe everything this corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous Zanu PF regime says and does, even with 40 years of checked history, beggars belief!
Nations often get the government they deserve. We certainly deserve this corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF dictatorship. One can only hope that the soaring numbers of covid-19 cases and deaths will force the people to finally open their eyes and snap out of their sloth-like mental slumber.
If government believed its on reports on covid-19 cases and deaths then it should open schools. Zimbabwe has one of the lowest covid-19 cases and death per capita in the world.
I do not believe the government's figures and, worse still, government has not ramped up the tests to identify any covid-19 hot spots and most school are not able to provide a clean environment to spot them becoming a covid-19 hot spot.
“A Senior nurse at the maximum prison hospital certified that the inmate died of pneumonia ,there is panic from both inmates and officers over this pandemic which has hit Chikurubi maximum prison,” said the source.
Chikurubi maximum has 2500 inmates as of today who have all been put at risk by the death.
Zimbabwe’s official per capita corona virus figures is impressive! We 6 070 confirmed cases and 155 deaths or 400 cases 10 deaths per million population compare to SA 613 000 cases and 13 000 deaths or 10 000 cases and 200 deaths per million. SA’s situation is 20 times worse than that in Zimbabwe. This does not make any sense since Zimbabwe’s health care service is in total shambles compared to that in SA - it poorly funded, poorly equipped and poorly staffed.
The secret to Zimbabwe’s very low covid-19 figures is that Zimbabwe has not been testing.
The death of the Chikurumbi prison has triggered panic at the institution because everyone knows that he died of covid-19 but, officially, he died of pneumonia. He, like many, many others, who should have been tested as soon as he showed the covid-19 symptoms or had reason to suspect he had the virus but was never tested.
The people of Zimbabwe must know by now that the country’s official covid-19 figures are cooked up and whilst Zanu PF is able to boast that it is doing a good job containing the virus the truth is anything but. By failing to test and keep track on the spread of the virus the country is helping the virus spread because we are not taking even the common sense precautions such as isolating those with the virus.
SENIOR resident medical officers (SRMOs) at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals have downed their tools with immediate effect after a number of their colleagues in the profession tested positive for the coronavirus.
The professionals include obstetrics and gynaecologists.
They have since recommended that the hospital's Mbuya Nehanda Maternity wing be disinfected as a matter of urgency.
The decision to down tools by the specialist doctors comes weeks after eight babies who needed urgent assistance died because of lack of proper care due to understaffing as nurses are on strike to press for better remuneration and personal protective equipment (PPE).
In a letter to the hospital management, the specialist doctors said the decision to stop offering their services was in the best interest of patients.
"A considerable number of the SRMOs have tested positive for SARS-COVID-19 and a sizeable number of SRMOs are displaying symptoms of COVID-19 and await to be tested. In the best interest of other health workers and patients, we have found it best that we self-isolate at home while Mbuya Nehanda Maternity Hospital is disinfected," the notice read.
Zimbabwe is facing its greatest challenge of the three or more generations and yet we continue to do nothing to deal with the growing human tragedy; we pretend everything is normal.
Health care workers are supposed to be tested regularly for corona virus and yet here we are, five months after it was clear the virus was present in Zimbabwe, we are only testing the doctors now.
This Zanu PF government has the money and resources to impose a dawn to dusk curfew right across the land and yet is failing to buy PPE for health care workers and to carryout a regular US$ 6 per worker test. And we, the people, have said nothing as if this is fine! Well we are all paying dearly for our foolishness.
"As of August 25, 2020 Zimbabwe had recorded 6 196 Covid-19 cases, 4 961 recoveries and 166 deaths. The national recovery rate now stands at 80 percent while case fatality rate has risen to 2.7 percent as of yesterday," read the statement.
"A total of 126 people tested positive in the last 24 hours and 11 more deaths were recorded; 10 from Harare and one from Mashonaland west.”
Zimbabwe’s confirmed covid-19 cases has remained very low at 6 000 cases or 4 cases for every one million compared to SA with over 600 000 cases or 10 000 cases for every one million South Africans. When you know of the two countries, Zimbabwe is the least prepared to deal with the pandemic one has to ask what is going on? What is going on is that Zimbabwe is not testing.
As of end of July SA had done 3 million test which 1 in 20 people. Zimbabwe had only done 145 000 tests which 1 in 110. It therefore comes as no surprise that a number of senior doctors at Parerinyatwa Hospital have just tested positive of covid-19; why they are only being tested now, 5 month since the outbreak, when they should have been tested regularly.
Zimbabwe’s low covid-19 cases are because the country is not testing and the reality out there is totally different! By failing to test, trace and track as aggressively as we should it means there are many people with covid-19 who are mixing freely and spreading the virus when they should be in isolation.
How long are we going to continue to bury our heads in the sand and play Russian roulette with people’s lives for the sake a cheap publicity stunt of having low covid-19 cases.
Recurring droughts and failure to import water chemicals have resulted in some parts of Harare without tap water.
Residents have to depend on open water sources or overcrowded manually pumped boreholes.
Twenty-three-year-old Chester Musha is one of those that wake up around 3 AM to queue for water or the borehole dries up that day.
Zimbabwe has the resources to enforce a dawn to dusk curfew right across the land with well equipped Army, Police and CIO armed to the teeth. And yet the same government has failed to ensure the nation has something as basic as clean running water.
The failure to supply clean water is something that has been going on for donkey years and now the chicken are coming home to roost. The failure to have clean running water will only mean the corona virus will spread far and wide.
“As of 26 August 2020, Zimbabwe had 6 251 confirmed cases, including 5 001 recoveries and 179 deaths,” the Health Ministry said in its daily Covid-19 update.
Zimbabwe has stopped revealing how many tests the country is doing but as of the end of July 2020 when it did release that information the country had done 145 000 tests or tested 1 out of every 110 population since the corona virus out break. SA with comparable corona virus problems to Zimbabwe had done 3 million tests or 1 in 20 of the population. in the same period. SA had 600 000 confirmed covid-19 cases to Zimbabwe's 6 000.
The advantage with testing is that those who test positive are then put into isolation and thus slow down the spread of the virus. The advantage of NOT testing is the country's confirmed cases will remain very low, Zanu PF has been boasting about Zimbabwe's low confirmed cases. The disadvantage of NOT testing is than there are many people with the virus who are left in the community to infect others.
There is overwhelming evidence that there are a hell lot more people with covid19 than the government is admitting. The majority of Zimbabweans are believing the government figures because they are a very naive and gullible lot who are easily cheated, not once not twice but again and again and again!
Zanu PF has rigged elections for 40 years and counting and many Zimbabweans have yet to notice it! The price of closing their eyes and allow Zanu PF to falsify the corona virus figures is that many Zimbabwe are getting the virus and many will die!
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