This is an opinion of Savanna News
There is no reason to doubt the numbers being published by the Ministry of health and Child Care about coronavirus infections in Zimbabwe. The disease starts very slow then hits inflection point after a month or so. Fatality rate also lags by 3 weeks and then catches up. Savanna News believes the numbers are scary for Zimbabwe’s population size. We are still in great danger. Worse still there is no hope that after 21 days we would have enough medical facilities to handle the peak of even a flattened curve. This is not because we think Zimbabwe is not prepared, but no country can ever be prepared for a pandemic of such a magnitude like this. Zimbabwe is no exception
The numbers being reported are true according to the tests that have been done. But what is to note is that there are two types of testing kits, the rapid test kit and the laboratory testing. The rapid tests only detects the virus when certain antibodies are present. So you can get a false negative.
The laboratory test is more accurate requires certain lab machinery which we only have one in Zimbabwe at present. Lancet and laboratories in Zimbabwe are in the process of trying to acquire more so more numbers can be tested.
Definitely we are still in danger but we implemented the shutdown earlier than a lot of countries at this point so it is working in our favour.
The lockdown works best if we get sufficient testing capabilities by the 21st day otherwise we would have just delayed the inevitable. 21 days is sufficient time to use even the rapid test kits because we would be out of incubation period.