The Zimbabwean government has come under scrutiny for its nonchalant reaction to the coronavirus crisis, with critics worried that Zimbabweans will be blocked from entering other countries when they finally lift travel restrictions.
On Monday afternoon, an Ethiopian Airways plane landed at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport with 32 Zimbabweans returning from the United Kingdom, one of the hotspots of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Prominent journalist Hopewell Chin’ono confirmed that the plane landed in Harare at approximately 12:30 PM CAT and dropped its passengers before it proceeded to Zambia. Said Chin’ono:
[The] plane landed and dropped its passengers and it is now on its way to Zambia.
How the Zimbabwean Government handles this will be key to whether other countries will allow us into their borders when they Unlock.
Uganda and others are putting citizens in a mandatory 21-day quarantine.
Reports indicate that health officials are in a quandary on the way forward because there is no ready isolation centre where they can be quarantined for the mandatory 21 days.
Meanwhile, South Africa isolated students who were repatriated from Wuhan, China for a 21-day period even though all of them had tested negative for COVID-19.