Africa-Press – Zambia. ZAMBIA has crossed the 100,000 mark for cumulatively confirmed COVID-19 cases. And the country has in the last 24 hours recorded 738 new confirmed cases out of 6,987 tests conducted bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases recorded to date to 100,278.
Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Kennedy Malama said five new deaths have been recorded in the last 24 hours. He said all the deaths were reported from Lusaka with four classified as COVID-19 associated deaths, while one was classified as a COVID-19 death.
“Any life lost is a life we cannot bring back – a child, a parent, a sibling, a grandparent. In the past one week we have been losing on average 5 people per day.We have equally seen an increase in the number of critical cases in our health facilities.It is therefore imperative that we strengthen our community interventions if we are to bring the situation under control.
To respond effectively we are increasing our hospital capacity in order to meet the demand, and we are providing support and technical assistance to the provinces,” Dr Malama said.
He said the ministry has deployed infectious disease specialists to support teams in the provinces as the country prepare for increased critical care management needs.
“We have also made progress towards finalising the recruitments of 766 health workers some of whom will be strategically placed in the COVID-19 facilities.We are determined to see this preparedness translated into practice. Furthermore, interventions are being undertaken to strengthen production and delivery of oxygen in our hospitals,” he said.
And Dr Malama said government remain concerned with increasing COVID 19 cases associated with super spreader events such as weddings, matebeto, spiritual and other social gatherings, institutional workshops, meetings including general meetings. He called people to refrain from holding such activities at the time when the country is recording unprecedented high cases of COVID 19.
“In line with our nine-pillar strategy, the continuation of routine service is important in order to protect the health and wellbeing of our people. To ensure continuity of routine health services, we shall be conducting child health week throughout the country in the last week of June, scheduled to commence two days before the resumption of the second round of the AstraZeneca vaccination.
We have made headway in finalising the preparations the second round vaccinations and we are scheduled to redistribute the ring-fenced doses of AstraZeneca later in the week. All measures are in place to ensure that the second dose vaccination campaign is carried out seamlessly,” Dr Malama said.
