Covid-19 Cases Shoot To Over 500
23 June 2020
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Agnes Mahomva

Zimbabwe’s coronavirus cases have surpassed the 500 mark after 23 new infections were recorded on Monday.

The latest information was announced by the Ministry of Health and Child Care in its COVID-19 update which notes that of the twenty-three (23) new cases, twenty-one (21) are returnees from South Africa while two (2) are local cases. and are all isolated.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases to 512. Meanwhile, recoveries are at 64, active cases 442 and 6 deaths.

The country’s Covid-19 chief coordinator in the Office of the President and Cabinet Dr Agnes Mahomva has said the recent record jump in confirmed Covid-19 cases was more because of a spike in testing after more kits were procured, rather than an increase in infection rates. In an interview with the Herald on Friday, Dr Mahomva said:

“We have since started contact tracing of the local transmissions as we always do with any confirmed case and we are hoping to get finer details once that process is complete.”

“This process is bound to increase the number of people being tested and the more the people are tested, the more the cases we are also bound to confirm.”

Most of the cases recorded recently were returnees in quarantine centres prompting some to believe that some were getting infected in quarantine centres.

The government has however allayed the fears saying inmates are tested upon arrival which means those who test positive would be positive before the quarantine.

As of a week ago, a total of 26 451 antigen based, or PCR, tests have been done in the country from which 486 tested positive. A further, 35 946 other tests were conducted through rapid diagnostic testing.

However, PCR is the test used to confirm infection, recovery or lack of infection while the rapid testing is used to screen large groups to find out who needs the more complex test to confirm infection or to confirm that the screening test was a false positive.