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Covid-19 is a long way from being beaten and will be with us for some time to come. As a result, we all need to work around this, learn to cope and figure out what can be done to maintain a normal economy and normal services without filling hospitals and seeing more people die.
At the same time, the measures besides keeping the economy functional should be part of the effort to beat back Covid-19, Zimbabwe joining the rest of the world in doing its share to end the pandemic.
It only needs one hold-out country and it can flame up again easily, probably with new variants.
The Zimbabwean Government has been determined to accept the findings of reputable scientific consensus from the very beginning, both from its own medical experts and from the World Health Organisation, and has wanted our own experts to be continually updating their knowledge and be in constant contact with the global scientific community, so the advice they offer is the best available.
But the Government has to also deal with practicalities, that people need to earn a living, need to go to school, need to travel, need to buy food and other supplies and need to deal with State institutions and Government officials almost daily.
So it allowed almost all the productive sectors of the economy to go back to business fairly early, although not business as usual. The agricultural, mining and industrial sectors have little direct contact with the general public, so they were required to enforce basic health measures like masking, social distancing and decent hygiene on farms and in mines and factories.
The commercial sector had to ensure the same within the working environment, and because they exist for the shoppers to go further and ensure that their customers observed the same requirements and were temperature checked and sanitised as they came in, wore their mask the whole time they were in the shop, and did not crowd each other.
Many shopkeepers also put in screens for till operators and others with a lot of customer contact to protect their own staff.
The same measures have governed the Government’s relations with the public. The State and the Government are there to provide services, that is their reason to exist.
But at the same time they need to protect their own staff, and need to protect the people whom their staff deal with. The Government enforced the same measures it had laid out for the private sectors, but went a little further, both to ensure the lowest possible risk and set an example to others.
Where possible numbers were limited to ensure decent social distancing. This saw those offices that could function on lower staff, at least for a short while, doing this and places like the courts minimising the numbers that could be admitted to watch the court proceedings.
These were short term solutions, since people are hired to do certain duties and a department cannot be below maximum efficiency for very long, without intolerable delays and a totally unacceptable standard of service.
So other measures are needed.
The other area where the Government took the lead was with vaccination. The total scientific consensus around the world is that vaccination is the only permanent solution to Covid-19.
Vaccines are not yet perfect and have to be used with other measures, but they do limit the risk sharply against infection and do in almost all cases where there is infection limit the severity of the symptoms, as the body has a flying start in using its natural defences.
This is why our Government, and every other government on the planet, has been encouraging people to get vaccinated and while all governments, including ours, have been scraping up the extra money needed to buy and distribute vaccines.
It is such an obvious measure, and one with the backing of the entire reputable scientific and public health community.
While it is surprising that some people hang back and do not get vaccinated, and this is fed by ignorance and by some social media platforms with political and other agendas, it is a fact.
More and more governments have moved towards compulsory vaccinations of those they employ, their own civil servants and others in the State system who provide public services.
And this has been backed up by suspension and disciplinary action when a State worker does not accept vaccination orders.
Zimbabwe is not doing anything that other countries have not already done when the Public Service Commission at the end of last week gave out the order that all unvaccinated civil servants now have to be sent home on suspension without pay with disciplinary action initiated.
The instruction was given many months ago to ensure everyone had time and access to vaccines.
While some argue that medical decisions should rest with the individual, it is accepted everywhere, including in the Zimbabwean constitution, that this can be overridden by the need to protect the public as a whole.
An infectious disease can only be fought by everyone having to follow the rules, rather than by people choosing whether they kill or not kill other people.
With civil servants there is an additional requirement, not just creating a safe working environment. We all have to deal with officials at some stage, even if we are not keen on being summonsed to court or paying taxes or standing in line for a permit of some kind or even going to school.
We are entitled to do these sometimes unpleasant face-to-face meetings in maximum safety, and we all rather like the fact that the person we have to deal with is vaccinated.
Several countries have now gone further and insisted that groups in the private sector must also be vaccinated.
Zimbabwe so far demands that only those in the hospitality industry, and their customers, are fully vaccinated but the time has now come when we need to consider others.
Some companies have already made it clear that they want their staff vaccinated or tested regularly, to ensure the safety of the people they work with and the customers they serve.
While there have been objections none has prevailed, but there are many employers who would welcome a public health regulation that they are entitled to demand vaccination.
The one exception the Public Service Commission made was to allow those certified by a reputable licensed doctor that vaccination could make a health condition worse to be exempted.
This is very rare since most doctors want most patients with pre-existing conditions vaccinated as quickly as possible to minimise the danger from other conditions.
We have now accepted we need to live with Covid-19 and manage the risks. Compulsory vaccination plus the other measures do indeed allow us to do this, but only if we all follow the best measures; any exceptions do not only impact on the hold-outs, but everyone they have to deal with.
Online Reporter