Bulawayo no longer has a Covid-19 quarantine centre with those needing isolation now being sent to Esigodini and Bubi, an official has revealed.
Speaking during an online reform indaba meeting hosted by Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) on transparency and accountability of Covid-19 resources, Fanwell Dzoma, the Bulawayo provincial welfare officer said the city does not have a public facility that can be used as a quarantine centre.
“For now, there is no quarantine centre for Bulawayo, those in need of quarantine are now being accommodated at either Inyathi public training centre in Bubi or Eskhoveni public service training centre at Esigodini,” said Dzoma.
Quarantine centres are used to house returnees into the country before they are released into the community.
“The challenge, why we no longer have a quarantine centre in Bulawayo it is because we don’t have a public institution that can cater for returnees who need to be quarantined, of cause we have been using these Polytechnics then the schools but when they opened we had the challenges then of where to put these returnees so it was decided that since we don’t have public institutions like the other districts or provinces like the one that we talked about like Bubi and Esigodini, so we may now have to use those public institutions.
He added that “After schools opened around September, we were now using Khumalo hotel but it was a private institution so it was charging the Ministry a lot of money this is why we decided that we should no longer continue to use this hotel because a lot of resources will be needed.”
Dzoma said the seven quarantine centers that had been previously set up in the city received 4 075 returnees.
“The seven that we had here in Bulawayo were Bulawayo Poly Tech, United College of Education, Youth Centre, Townsend High school, Gifford High School, Standard hotel and Khumalo hotel. These were the quarantine centres that we had. The Ministry here in Bulawayo cumulatively received 4 075 returnees, those were the returnees that were quarantined in all quarantine centres that were here.
Meanwhile, Dzoma said few people need quarantine at the moment as most of them are being tested at the border.
“Also, another issue now is most of these returnees that we were receiving from the past weeks ago are being tested at the border and most of them are now coming with their results, from border they are transported to Bulawayo they go to their homes, they no longer need quarantine if they are negative but for those that are positive those are the ones that go to Inyathi or Eskhoveni but they are very few,” he said.
