Chronicle Editor
Stephen Mpofu, Analysis
Just when many Zimbabweans, buoyed by daily decreases in new coronavirus cases along with fewer deaths, comes hope-dampening news about a new variant detected in four vaccinated Botswana nationals with a history of travelling outside their country.
A health expert said on Monday that the Covid-19 mutation was likely to find its way into our own country within a week thus coinciding with the Easter and Independence holidays.
South Africa is known to have detected a new Covid-19 variant earlier than Botswana.
Now, with a reported upsurge of xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa in which a Zimbabwean, Elvis Nyathi was murdered and his body burnt by vigilante groups on the rampage after undocumented foreigners among them migrant workers accused of taking jobs away from South Africans, Zimbabweans fleeing that country or coming home for the Easter and Independence holidays are likely to be carriers of the South African Covid-19 variant and with the Botswana Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 probably already resident in some Zimbabweans and surreptitiously knawing at the help and lives of their hosts and in the process complicating the fight by health workers here against the Covid-19 pandemic.
The severity of the symptoms of the variants detected in both Botswana and South Africa is not yet known but health authorities in Botswana are studying the deadliness or otherwise of the new variant.
In previous Easter and Christmas holidays, Zimbabweans living and working in neighbouring countries flocked back home bearing the money they earned abroad and consumer goods and arriving into the warm embraces, hugs and kisses of relatives and loved ones welcoming them.
This time around, however, with reports of the Covid-19 variants making headlines in various news media, distanciation by welcomers back home becomes imperative against potential infection by carriers of the Covid-19 mutations.
At the same time, it should be regarded as a matter of urgency for local health experts to discover from their counterparts in Botswana and South Africa the symptoms of infections by the new variants and proceed to warn Zimbabweans to report to health authorities or the police any visitors from the two neighbouring countries complaining of ill-health with symptoms similar to those known to accompany the new Covid-19 variant infections.
Zimbabwe shares porous borders with both Botswana and South Africa and so it behoves on authorities in this country to police these borders as carriers of the new Covid-19 virus variants are likely to sneak into the country, avoiding official ports of entry for fear of being quarantined and so jumping borders carrying their Covid-19 variant cargos to the detriment of relatives and friends in the countryside and also endangering those that the diasporans may visit in our urban areas.
That those infected by the new variant in Botswana are said to have been vaccinated, which therefore suggests that the new Covid-19 mutations might be more deadly and so that those passing through official exit and entry points between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe and carrying vaccination certificates must compulsorily be quarantined to undergo further tests in a bid to discover if they are not carriers of the new variant.
The powers-that-be might also wish to set up health surveillance teams working with the police for their protection in rural areas in a bid to detect border jumpers carrying the new variants which might render some countries in the West no go areas for Zimbabwean nationals should some among us be found to carry the new Covid-19 strains.
In addition to the measures suggested above in this discourse it now appears imperative for Zimbabweans vaccinated twice to receive booster or third vaccinations just in case more deadly variants are spawned by the coronavirus.
Finally, a compelling message in the above discourse is that Zimbabweans who have all along dilly-dallied when exhorted to receive vaccinations against Covid-19 are actually courting death upon themselves and their families and friends to whom they may spread any deadly new Covid-19 variant due to their apathetic attitudes.
Our Government has done a lot so far in getting people to abide by the World Health Organisation guidelines of social distancing, masking up, sanitizing and washing hands thoroughly to safeguard themselves and others from Covid-19 and can therefore not be expected to use the sjambok and drive everyone into compliance with WHO protocols for them to not contract or spread Covid-19 to others.
Above all else the lives of every Zimbabwean is in their own hands to protect or throw into the grave willy-nilly by shutting their minds to protective measures by both the Government and WHO.
The upshot of the coronavirus pandemic getting worse will no doubt be the demise of our economy, and economies of other countries similarly devastated by the pandemic, and with that the demise of lives with the possibility of food and other important resources becoming vanquished.
Online Reporter