BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) – Malawi is facing a surge of COVID-19 that is overwhelming the southern African country, where a presidential residence and a national stadium have been turned into field hospitals to save lives.
President Lazarus Chakwera, who has only been in office for six months, lost two Cabinet ministers to COVID-19 in January, amid a boom that has led to a state of national disaster in all 28 districts of Malawi declared.
Chakwera declared three days of national mourning over the deaths of transport and local government ministers, which shocked the country and inspired a series of new measures to halt the spread of the virus in a country with a poor health system . A more contagious strain of the coronavirus first reported in South Africa has meanwhile been confirmed in Malawi.
“Our medical facilities are terribly understaffed, and our medical staff is among the number of people,” Chakwera said in a recent speech.
According to John Phuka, co-chair of the presidential task force on COVID-19, Malawi has increased its number of confirmed cases of the disease above 23,000, including a total of 702 deaths as of Monday.
The numbers seem relatively small in a country of 18 million, but the 14,000 active cases are many times more than the number of established hospital beds. Officials are setting up temporary facilities to increase the number of treatment units from 400 to at least 1,500, and sometimes set up tents on the lawns of hospitals.
According to officials, the state house of the presidential residence in the southern city of Zomba will soon be turned into a 100-bed treatment facility.
A field hospital with 300 beds in the Bingu National Stadium admitted patients. Another 300-bed field hospital has opened in a youth center in Blantyre, the country’s largest city. And a facility for 200 beds for emergency care has been set up in the northern city of Mzuzu.
The government also recruited 1,128 medical professions, just under 1,380 required by health authorities.
The government of Chakwera – a retired minister who was a relative political newcomer when he was elected in June – has already spent more than $ 38 million to tackle the pandemic. Last month, he ordered the finance minister to release another $ 22.6 million as soon as possible to meet the demands of the crisis.
Among the measures put in place by Chakwera, which began broadcasting a virus-related address to the country every Sunday night after the deaths of its ministers, is the closure of schools for at least 15 days until February 8. A night clock is applied and all gatherings are limited to no more than 50 people.
“The situation is rather desperate,” Chakwera said in a recent speech, referring to the lack of health infrastructure. “Although we have set up 400 national treatment units in my six months, the current wave of infections has completely overwhelmed these facilities.”
Malawi has received enough doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to vaccinate 20% of the population, with the first consignment to arrive in late February, he said. Frontline workers, the elderly and people with underlying conditions will be put first, Chakwera told the country, calling for outside help to combat the pandemic.
The international aid group Doctors Without Borders also responded to the crisis and opened a 40-bed COVID-19 division that is fully staffed and managed by its employees. However, the group noted that it may not be enough to make more hospital beds.
“Malawi urgently needs access to vaccination – which unfortunately is unlikely to take place before April 2021, and even then only for a portion of its people,” the organization said in a statement. “By that time, the pandemic may have already peaked and killed many people who could be protected by vaccination.”
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