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HARARE: Four Zimbabwean cabinet ministers have died of COVID-19, three in the past two weeks, highlighting a resurgence of the disease that is sweeping through this southern African country.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the coronavirus is reaping a “bad harvest” in the country.
“The pandemic has been indiscriminate. There are no spectators, judges, no holier than you. No supermen or superwomen. We are all exposed, ”Mnangagwa said in a nationally televised speech.
Mnangagwa presided over the funeral of a cabinet minister last week, shortly after the death of the foreign minister was announced. Then came the death of the Minister of Transport. Several other high-profile politicians and prominent Zimbabweans have also recently died.
The opposition accuses the government of using COVID-19 as a weapon by detaining its parliamentarians, officials and other critics in overcrowded prisons where the disease is easily transmitted. Critics also accuse the government of neglecting public hospitals, where many COVID-19 sufferers cannot get the oxygen they need to survive.
Many of the country’s elites are treated in expensive private facilities or travel outside of the country for medical care.
The government says it is doing its best and that despite wide political and economic differences, fighting the virus is a war for everyone.
Zimbabwe, like many other African countries, initially recorded a low number of COVID-19, but has recently seen an increase in cases.
A new, more infectious variant of the virus is feared to reach the country when tens of thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa returned home for the Christmas season.
The country of 15 million recorded a total of 31,007 cases, including 974 deaths, on January 23, up from just over 10,000 cases and 277 deaths in early December, according to government figures.
Zimbabwe’s death rate from COVID-19 has recently doubled, and the 7-day moving average of daily deaths increased in the past two weeks from 0.10 deaths per 100,000 people on January 9 to 0.28 deaths per 100,000 people on January 23. January, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In poor areas like Chitungwiza, the sprawling residential area about 30 km southeast of Harare, undertakers are overwhelmed.
“Coronavirus, this is something you used to read about in the news, (but) now it’s here at our doorstep. People are dying, ”said Coleta Moyana, a Chitungwiza resident. Officials are seeking more space for burials to accommodate a growing number of deaths.
Many people do not get tested or go to hospitals for help, said an association of doctors, noting that in some days, nearly half of COVID-19 deaths occur outside of hospitals.
“Those undiagnosed cases are spreading a lot,” the Zimbabwe Major Hospital Physicians Association said earlier this month.
“COVID-19 affects everyone, but not everyone equally. It has entrenched and exacerbated the extreme inequalities and injustices that existed before the pandemic, “Itai Rusike, director of the Harare-based organization, Community Working Group on Health, told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“Most poor Zimbabweans without health insurance end up dying at home,” he said.
Zimbabwe has yet to receive any vaccinations. Mnangagwa said on Saturday that government health officials are still deciding which vaccine to purchase.
“Our experts are very close to finishing the course to recommend … and it will be very soon,” he said.
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