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Roselyne Sachiti
Features, Health& Society Editor
On May 24, Kwekwe in the Midlands Province began its two-week localised lockdown.
The localised lockdown was ordered by Government to contain the spread of Covid-19 variant B.1.617, first detected in India.
Controlling the geographical spread of the variant virus meant restricting movements in this part of the country.
This could put a halt to a spike of infections.
Additionally, the localised local health facilities would have a strong chance of bringing the variant under control by tracking down immediate contacts.
Other preventive measures which enhance the chances that any chain of infection can be broken were also put in place.
At the end of the initial two-week lockdown, Kwekwe residents thought the storm was over, hoping life would get back to normal.
Yet, the reality is that they are not yet out of the woods, prompting Government to extend the localised lockdown by another two weeks.
Announcing the Government position during a post-Cabinet briefing on Tuesday, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Senator Monica Mutsvangwa said the extension had been necessitated by a surge in active Covid-19 cases in the city and its surroundings, with the Indian variant B.1.617 being detected in some instances.
Under the intensified lockdown, Kwekwe has recorded 74 cases in total, with 70 cases still active and only three recoveries, although there has been just a single death.
Why localised lockdowns?
While some may feel localised lockdowns are a punishment, they in fact are meant to protect them.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, localised lockdowns and non-pharmaceutical interventions that include social distancing, wearing face mask, handwashing with soap and clean running water and sanitising have kept economies of many countries going.
These have proved effective, especially where communities comply, as seen by a decrease in infection numbers.
While some may argue that localised lockdowns may affect the economic and social activities of affected areas, they remain a necessary public health intervention.
Community Working Group on Health (CWGH), executive director, Itai Rusike said the localised lockdown introduced in Kwekwe is an important public health measure.
“The localised lockdown helps to prevent Covid-19 and especially the Indian variant B.1.617 that was first detected in Kwekwe here in Zimbabwe from spreading widely to the other parts of the country,” said Mr Rusike.
He said the introduction of a localised measure in a Covid-19 hotspot is to cut the transmission of the coronavirus and not to necessarily to punish the affected community.
“The localised lockdown can greatly reduce the social and economic impact of Covid-19 by keeping the national economic and social activities functional as compared to the blanket national lockdown suppression strategies that can result in the shutting down of the economy, schools and straining the public health activities with dire consequences to the population,” he said.
Mr Rusike noted that at the advent of Covid-19 outbreak, the government of China introduced a local lockdown on Wuhan, the city where the pandemic is thought to have started.
“Since then, many other countries such South Korea and Germany have done the same when local spikes in cases have appeared,” he said.
He said it was important that the public and stakeholders in Kwekwe should be well informed of the Covid-19 public health measures being taken in their city for them to make sense of how to implement them and their impact on their lives.
“The compulsory wearing of facemasks by all in public spaces should be enforced as it is a more socially acceptable measure,” he said.
How other countries fared
According to a preprint article “Effectiveness of Localised Lockdowns in the Covid-19 Pandemic” authored by Yige Li, Eduardo A Undurraga, and José R Zubizarreta, localised lockdowns in small geographic areas have become an important policy intervention to prevent viral spread in cases of resurgence.
The three authors explain how localised lockdowns can result in lower social and economic costs compared to larger-scale suppression strategies.
“Localised lockdowns are typically implemented in transmission hotspots and can be applied to populations or areas large and small to suppress an outbreak,” they said. “Localised lockdowns had not been widely used as a public health response to contain outbreaks until the current pandemic.”
Moreover, the authors point out that localised lockdowns can also provide a gradual exit from nationwide lockdowns.
Using the case of Chile, the authors found that the effectiveness of localised lockdown is strongly modulated by the duration of the intervention and the magnitude of the indirect effects from neighbouring geographic areas.
The data set used by the authors combines information from administrative Covid-19 surveillance records (30), a nationally representative household survey (31), and census data (32).
“The larger the proportion of neighbours under lockdown, the higher the effectiveness to control transmission,” they point out.
Their results also show that the effects of localised lockdowns are strongly modulated by their duration and are affected by indirect effects from neighbouring geographic areas that are not under lockdown.
“Our estimations suggest that extending localised lockdowns will slow down the epidemic,” the authors said.
They also pointed out that: “On the one hand, lockdowns may be particularly challenging for socially vulnerable individuals who depend on daily wages, have limited savings, or do not receive external support, as their need to secure income may be at odds with policy.”
Writing in The Conversation Africa Edition, Medical Epidemiologist, University of Oxford, Lakshmi Manoharan said local lockdowns do work — as evidence from a study of these measures in the Italian city of Vo’ in 2020 demonstrated — and they remain a best option if there is continued viral transmission in the community.
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