It is now 80 days into the lockdown, the Health and Child Care ministry reported that as of June 19, the number of COVID-19 positive cases had increased by 10 cases, bringing the total cumulative cases to 463 cases. The number of recovered patients currently stands at 63.

Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe

We reiterate the inconsistency in providing demographic disaggregation of persons testing positive for COVID-19 and once again call upon the Ministry of Health and Child Care to maintain reporting consistency.

Whilst we acknowledge the fact that the testing prioritisation has been directed to mandatory quarantine and isolation centres we remain concerned at limited testing to communities broadly.

We remain concerned that the consolidated test conducted by the private sector who have resumed operations are not being reported in the Ministry of Health and Child Care figures.

We remain concerned that the Statutory Instruments on the resumption of operations requires testing of employees upon opening and once every 14 days, yet the Minister of Health and Child Care Obadiah Moyo verbally announced that testing can be conducted upon opening and once every 30 days.

We call upon government to revise all the applicable Statutory Instruments regarding COVID-19, in order to update the regulations accordingly,

We encourage the government to desist from the emerging State practice to govern by announcements and not by law.
We urge the Parliament of Zimbabwe to exercise its full mandate on the raft of COVID-19 measures to ensure coherence, compliance and consistently by the executive in this regard

We now urge government to ensure prioritisation of the needs and freedoms of persons held in quarantine, so as to avoid over-detention of citizens within quarantine facilities.

We, therefore, urge the State to expedite social protection and food aid programmes and to implement comprehensive feasible strategies to alleviate economic shocks presented by COVID-19.