The ManicaPost
Zimbabwe and many other countries are currently in lockdown, with restaurants, bars, schools and gymnasiums closed.
For the past 25 days, and for the next nine days, Zimbabwean citizens are required to stay at home, unless if it is absolutely necessary for them to go out, so as to break the chain of the highly contagious Covid-19.
After the current 14-day lockdown lapses, Government will again assess the gains of the lockdown and decide on whether to further extend the lockdown or lift it.
China was the first to take this route in January and cases of new infections slowed down. India, France, Italy and Britain, among others, then followed suit.
Many people, Zimbabweans included, are wondering why these measures are necessary, how long they will need to go on and what it will take before life goes back to normal, and more importantly, what the new normal will look like.
Understandably, people are questioning how a lockdown works, and why everyone, including the lower risk populations (younger and healthier) should also stay at home during this time.
The anxiety is normal as this is uncharted territory.
With vaccines and treatments months or even years away, physical distancing, as recommended by the World Health Organisation, is the only intervention currently available to keep people healthy.
It is therefore crucial for everyone to understand why we have to endure lockdowns. The main purpose of a lockdown is to reduce the number of people each confirmed case infects.
According to scientific research, viruses have varying abilities of infecting people. With regards to Covid-19, the virus is more infectious than other viruses, and one infection can lead to 406 other infections within a month if the infected people go about their usual activities in a normal way.
This is where lockdowns, mandatory quarantines, self-isolation and physical distancing come in — to break the chain of infection.
Essentially, the less contact people have with each other, the less the virus can spread. As one person noted, “The virus does not move, people move it. We stop moving, the virus stops moving, the virus dies. It’s that simple.”
Therefore painful as a lockdown might be for us, it works.
While a lockdown extension wasn’t what a significant portion of Zimbabweans wanted to hear last Sunday, it is in fact the best way to reduce infections and deaths, at least until a vaccine is found.
In the meantime, Government has been given a window to boost health care preparedness, source treatment, as well as conduct mass testing and contact tracking.
As President Mnangagwa pointed out in his address on Sunday, the lockdown in itself is not the panacea to this problem. It is meant to be complemented by various initiatives at personal and Government level, so as to flatten the curve.
In the past week, we have seen Zimbabwe taking this route as testing was taken some notches up, with many people getting tested.
Contact tracing of the confirmed cases is also being carried out, while Zimbabweans coming from foreign countries are currently in mandatory quarantine at various Government institutions.
And early this week, Zimbabwe received a 30-tonne consignment of Covid-19 supplies, including rapid testing kits, ventilators and personal protective equipment.
Great progress is being made in rehabilitating and equipping provincial isolation centres. Only last week, Government took over the rehabilitation and running of Manicaland’s isolation centre — the Mutare Infectious Diseases Hospital, so as to ensure the province’s preparedness in the event that Covid-19 cases are recorded.
On the economic front, Government has since outlined its strategy in ensuring that the wheels of the economy will keep on turning during this lockdown. After all, President Mnangagwa has always been pointing out that a lockdown is not a shutdown.
In this new ‘normal’, we have to find ways of ensuring that the economy does not choke from the effects of Covid-19. While the fight to save life is crucial, Government is clearly alive to the fact that people’s livelihoods are equally important. With some sectors of the economy re-opened, that is the mining and manufacturing sectors, the gains of the 21-day lockdown have to be protected.
