By Feston Malekezo, BLANTYRE Malawi
At least 223 health workers have tested positive for Covid-19 in the country, a development which the government has described as risky as it has the potential of paralysing efforts in fighting the pandemic.
Chief of Health Services in the
Ministry of Health, Dr Charles Mwansambo, said both health workers that are
infected and those working on-shifts have to go into quarantine, a development
that is reducing further the numbers of frontline staff.
As of Sunday July 19, 2020,
nearly 3,000 Covid-19 positive cases had been recorded in the country, 7.7
percent of which are healthcare workers.
However, no health worker has
died with the virus out of the 62 deaths that have been registered so far.
Mwansambo has since advised
health workers to follow all the infection prevention measures right from the
time they wear the full personal protective equipment (PPE) to the time they
are removing it to avoid contracting the novel coronavirus.
“Covid-19 is hitting us hard because
the health workers, after their shift, they go into quarantine. So the more
health workers we have infected, the few health workers we have at our disposal
to do the work.
“I must say here that the health
workers can get infected in the hospital, but also we are part of the community
so some maybe infected in the communities where they come from. Every health
worker is encouraged to wear full PPE.
“However, these are not 100
percent fool proof. There might be some situations like when you are taking off
the PPE when you may get infected with the virus, so we are encouraging the
health workers to make sure that they follow all the infection prevention
measures right from the time they wear the PPE to the time they are removing
it,” Mwansambo said.
Reacting to this development,
health rights Activist, Maziko Matemba, maintained that provision of adequate
PPE can help to protect both the health workers and patients.
“These cases are increasing
because of lack of adequate protective equipment which is key to protect health
workers which has to be prioritised at all cost and if not checked will have a
negative impact on the Covid-19 response as we might have few health workers on
duty to support patients,” Matemba warned.
Malawi has the highest number of
positive cases among its neighbours, Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique.
Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda has disclosed that the country is expecting to receive 35,000 test kits by the end of the week saying the country was expecting about 10,000 tests kits from African Union and about 25,000 tests kits from Europe.
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