Public health experts in Zimbabwe say the country’s extension of a lockdown that includes a 12-hour, dusk-to-dawn curfew to thwart a recent swell in COVID19 cases and deaths will not yield much without adequate equipping of the country’s health care system.  

According to official figures, coronavirus has infected nearly 33,000 people and two-thirds of its 1,178 deaths are from January alone. 

The lockdown extension comes as the country says it is struggling to detect new highly contagious – and probably more lethal – variants of coronavirus.

The executive director of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights Calvin Fambirai, said his organization welcomed the two-week extension of the lockdown and a 12-hour, dusk-to-dawn curfew by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.