By Staff Reporter

Government will soon deploy health personnel at police checkpoints to screen for Covid 19 on all travellers in a bid to reduce the spread of the disease.

In a statement yesterday, Vice chairman of the Ad-Hoc Inter-Ministerial Taskforce on Covid-19, Professor Amon Murwira, said some check points will be manned with security personnel as well as doctors to enforce lockdown regulations and also spread Covid 19 awareness messages.

“We have agreed that law enforcement should be combined with awareness and also screening. There will be some points where we will actually send doctors to screen people in a car to find out if people are clean and clear in terms of the disease, not only papers.

“The papers do not tell whether you have Covid-19 or not, so we are increasing and tightening up the functions of our blocks. This is all in the spirit of protecting Zimbabweans,” said Prof Murwira.

The deployment of health personnel at road blocks is coming at a time the number of Covid 19 cases in the country has escalated to 10 009 as of yesterday with 589 people having already succumbed to the disease.

According to information from the Ministry of Health and Child Care, the country has now recorded 24 256 cases of Covid 19, with 13 658 having recovered from the disease.

Harare is the most affected Province with 4 599 Covid 19 positive cases, followed by Manicaland with 995 positive cases.

Meanwhile, Acting Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services, Dr Jenfan Muswere yesterday said a draft Covid 19 vaccine framework was being developed.

The Covid 19 vaccine is expected to be rolled out across the country starting from next month.