Minister of State for Bulawayo Metropolitan Province Judith Ncube has applauded residents for adhering to Covid-19 regulations as cases continue to decline in the city.
Minister Ncube also commended various stakeholders including the business community, frontline workers for working together to find solutions to curb the spread of the virus.
She made these remarks during a webinar titled “Covid-19 in Bulawayo:Where are we?” hosted by CITE and IAM4BYO Fighting Covid-19, Wednesday.
To date, Bulawayo has recorded 5240 cases, 4907 recoveries and 200 deaths. One new case was recorded, 43 recoveries and no deaths were reported in the last 24 hours.
“The people of Bulawayo have been so co-operative and forthcoming in this fight. When this pandemic started, we would hold meetings, and we would come up with useful ideas that have helped us to get to where we were now. The business community and various organisations were cognisant of the vulnerable groups of our community and they would provide food and other essentials,” she said.
“Of late we have seen a commendable decrease in the number of cases. Right now we have only 131 active cases, a notable decrease from sometime in January when we would have over 700 active cases at one go.”
Minister Ncube said although most people adhered to the set recommendations, there are some people who still hosted parties and opened shebeens during lockdown.
“It is worrying that when everyone is fighting for a cause, some people decided to defeat the purpose. Let’s all continue working together and stop this kind of behavior. We have a team of dedicated people who risk their lives on the frontline to fight this pandemic. Let’s work together with them. As we speak, over 4 000 people have been vaccinated,” she said.
Janah Ncube, a human rights advocate noted that the pandemic brought the Bulawayo community together.
“One thing we learnt is that everyone has a purpose. Whenever there’s an emergency we can’t always wait for the government. Various stakeholders came together and so much ground was covered in terms of resource mobilisation, information dissemination and learning more about the new virus,” she said.
Dr Mark Dixon, a consultant physician and senior lecturer at NUST said in order to keep the figures at bay and the community immune, people need to get vaccinated.
“To rid the society of the virus, people have to become immune to it. In this case either we have to get vaccinated or a substantive number of people get sick of the virus. The challenge is not many people have been exposed to the virus so the best way is to get vaccinated,” he said.
He added that through the cooperation of the people and their adherence to Covid-19 regulations, the figures decreased.
“We all now know that the best way to curb the spread is to avoid contact. During lockdown we realised that figures were kept at minimum. However we all need to get back to opening businesses because there’s no more means of survival for some families,” he said.
“It is therefore advisable that people keep their masks up, wash their hands regularly, sanitise surfaces and maintain social distancing at all times. This is the best way that the virus can be curbed.”
