The Senior Hospital Doctors Association (SHDA) said that Zimbabwe has not yet managed to control the spread of the novel coronavirus despite the decreasing number of active cases in the country.
SHDA secretary-general Aaron Musara claimed that the decrease in the number of confirmed cases could be a result of slowed down testing due to shortages of test kits.
Musara alluded to the country’s porous borders which allow people to return home without being quarantined, thus risking the undetected spread of COVID-19 within communities. He said:
The decrease that we are seeing in the number of confirmed cases is likely a result of slowed down testing due to shortages of test kits and this does not mean that we are out of the woods yet or that we have successfully managed to control the spread of the virus.
More needs to be done to ensure that we improve contact tracing, surveillance, isolation of confirmed cases, the sub-optimal implementation of infection prevention and control practices in health facilities, crowded institutions and places such as prisons, ZUPCO queues and markets.
Musara said doctors are still waiting for a formal communication from the government on how it intends to address their challenges.
He said the government’s appeal to ask doctors and nurses to return to work without addressing the key challenges, including unavailability of personal protective equipment (PPE) and salaries, will not work because they are currently incapacitated.