Tafadzwa Nyikadzino

The recent COVID 19 infections in Mhondoro should push authorities to step up their game in enforcing the ongoing lockdown for the country to successfully curb the spreading of the deadly pandemic.

The introduction of the 35 day lock down by President Emmerson Mnangagwa has seen law enforcement agents and local councils only focusing on enforcing the lockdown in Central Business Districts while neglecting residential areas where there are more human interactions.

In Harare, the Police and the army are mostly deployed on roads that lead to the CBD, but they are ignoring to monitor roads that link residential areas, hence giving people the freedom to loiter. This is elevating the risk of spreading Coronavirus due to unmonitored human interactions.

A visit to any high-density area in Harare would make one wonder if the country is truly on lockdown, or maybe the lockdown was effected to stop people from only getting into town. In other words, the lockdown only exists in the CBD because people are living their normal lives in their residential areas.

Most shopping centers have been turned into beer drinking pubs as men wake up as early as 6 am to gather around and share alcoholic drinks. Children are continuing to play football in the streets and vending is at its normalcy. Communally owned water sources like boreholes have become dangerous places because people are not observing social distancing as they jostle for water. The are no hand sanitisers for them to use after they touch the water pumping bar and this puts a lot of people at risk.

The situation is so bad that if only a few infected people were to be found in our residential areas, the number of new infections would easily surpass 1000. The very fact that the late Gogo Nguni got infected from a source that is yet to be established shows that the majority of citizens
are susceptible to contracting the disease as they are interacting freely. Therefore, our authorities need to be strict on effecting the lockdown.

More Policemen and Soldiers have to be deployed at each shopping center in every residential area to limit human interactions, This will increase the effectiveness of the lockdown.