After the Christmas holidays, Zimbabwe recorded an increase in infections and deaths in Covid-19, raising fears of an already fragile healthcare system.
The government has urged citizens to keep the lock, which includes movement restrictions for all services except the most important.
The reopening of schools has been postponed indefinitely following a Covid-19 outbreak in schools last term, while shops are only open daily until 3pm.
A twilight-to-dawn evening clock is also in place to avoid night gatherings and events.
The hosts of a New Year’s Eve dance hall concert that violated an earlier ban on more than 100 people’s gatherings were jailed by the Zimbabwean court for six months on Monday.
The Zimbabwean Association of Physicians for Human Rights (ZADHR) says the country’s hospitals cannot handle an increased demand for admissions, in a new report released on Wednesday.
“ZADHR notes with concern the limited capacity of local health care institutions to treat cases that need to be treated. 19. no body said.
The organization is also concerned about the increase in infections among frontline workers. Nearly 1,000 front-line workers in Zimbabwe were infected by Covid-19 due to a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), doctors say.
“Our conservative estimates indicate that more than 1,000 health workers are infected with COVID-19.
Medical associations have continued to highlight the worrying trends of health workers working without adequate PBT, ‘said ZADHR.
The doctors also sounded the alarm about limited ability to handle critical patients in need of intensive care while keeping the admission beds low.
“ZADHR strongly condemns the sad situation of the continuing limited ICU capacity nearly ten months after the detection of the first COVID-19 case,” the doctors said.
However, Zimbabwe’s secretary of information Nick Mangwana told CNN that the government was “on top of the situation.”
“At the moment, our capacity is not stretched. However, we are dealing with a fluid situation where it has an impact on a capacity if a frontline worker is positive.”
“The reason I said this thing could overwhelm us is because people did not follow the rules for the closure, so we saw the storm coming,” Mangwana said.
Last year, Zimbabwean doctors took the government to court for failing to provide privacy and other security equipment.
Zimbabwe’s health care system has been hit hard by a lack of funding, and health workers are at odds with the government over poor and often unpaid salaries.
Last year, billionaire Strive Masiyiwa intervened to get doctors back to work after months of horse trading with the government.