ACTING President, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga has announced an extension to the country’s lockdown which was supposed to end on February 5 by another two weeks in a bid to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
By Michael Gwarisa
He said the move has been necessitated by the presence of new strains to the virus which spread faster and are more lethal than the first strain which was recorded in Wuhan, China.
The level 4 lockdown that came into force on January 5, 2020 has stabilized 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%. Even though the number we are losing to the pandemic are falling, we bemoan the fact that Zimbabweans are dying at all. Any death is one but too many. Still we need to stay the course by upping our vigilance. The war is not yet won.
“It is in light of this that his Excellency and commander in Chief of the defense forces, President Dr, Emerson Mnangagwa has announced to extend the level 4 national lockdown by another two weeks to the 15th of February 2021,” said VP Chiwenga.
He added that government will be bringing in Vaccines against COVID-19. Meanwhile, a rollout strategy for the vaccine is being finalised
“We have a likelihood of new strains and variants circulating. The strains are more transmissible and infectious. We are doing genomic sequencing to see if these strains are in our environment. Results will be published as soon as we have them.”
