by Christopher Makaza
Due to the spike in cases of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, there will be no gatherings to mark the Heroes commemorations and the Defence Forces Day celebrations and President Emmerson Mnangagwa will address the nation using Virtual platforms, a senior Government official has said.
Briefing the Cabinet during the Twenty-Sixth Post Cabinet Press Briefing in Harare yesterday, Local Government and Public Works Minister who is the Acting Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on State Occasions, July Moyo revealed that the Virtual celebrations would take place over a period of two weeks and will be covered by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Services (ZBC-TV).
"The 2020 Heroes Day Commemorations will be held under the theme 'Remembering our Heroes ' on the 10th of August, the Defence Forces Day celebrations will be held on the 11th of August 2020 under the theme 'ZDF celebrating 40 years of excellent service to the people'.
"The Virtual celebrations will take place over a period of two weeks and covered by ZBC-TV which will extensively feature the Zimbabwe Defence Force's exploits, community assistance projects and the Defence Forces Medical Outreach Programme," said the Minister.
In order to curb the spread of the deadly Coronavirus, the Government banned gatherings exceeding 50 people, maintaining of social distancing and putting on the required face masks in public places.
According to a report on Zimbabwe's response to the COVID-19 outbreak presented by the Minister of Defence and War Veterans who is also the Acting Chair of the Ad-Hoc Inter-Ministerial Task Force on COVID-19, Cde Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, out of the 122 770 tests conducted throughout the country, 2704 were confirmed COVID-19 positive compared to the 1 713 cases reported on 20 July. This translates to a 68 percent increase in number of confirmed cases.
"Cabinet announces with regret, that the total number of COVID-19 fatalities has increased to 36 from 26 reported last week. Of particular concern is that cumulative number of confirmed local COVID-19 cases has increased by 112 percent from 791 to 1675 during the past week. Most of the local cases are in Bulawayo with 667, Harare 601 and Gweru 168," said the Minister.
The Minister revealed that Gweru was therefore declared a hotspot of COVID-19 in addition to Harare and Bulawayo, adding that Government was expediting efforts to put in place Rapid Result Test Teams to facilitate localised lockdowns in hotspot suburbs of the three cities.
The Cabinet noted with concern, that the ongoing strike in the health sector was negatively affecting the national COVID-19 response, revealing that more nurses will be urgently recruited from the available pool of qualified nurses, while processes to resolve those on industrial action continued.
In addition to strengthening, the COVID-19 response, Government revealed that it would also recruit additional staff to run PCR tests, including unemployed graduates and modalities were also being put in place to enable industrial and innovation hubs to produce Virus Transport Media (VTM), a critical ingredient in PCR tests currently in short supply.
The Government announced that the country's health centers had reasonable stocks of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), with stocks of at least three weeks per centre.
