By Wilbert Mukori- “We hope this vacuous regime will not renew the measures which imposed mandatory PCR tests and 10-day quarantine for everyone arriving in Zimbabwe,” Biti said.

Biti said Statutory Instrument 267 which followed Mnangagwa’s televised address was a “draconian, ill-thought piece of legislation typifying everything wrong with the regime.”

The omicron corona virus variant is real and although it is not as deadly as the other variants it is certainly more contagious. Zimbabwe’s economy is in ruins, its health service is all but collapsed and only 30% of the herd immunity have received the second vaccine jab. We will not cope if the omicron variant was to spread like a grass fire! We should at least do our best to try to stop it spreading like a grass fire.

The two options open to us are to accelerate the vaccination programme and ramp up the testing, tracing, tracking and isolation. Zimbabwe’s official covid-19 cases and deaths have remained very low compared to our neighbours but only because we have not been testing for the virus as per WHO recommendation and common-sense dictates. 

The cheating was to give the false impression Zimbabwe had handled the pandemic well but this was foolish in that the failure to test, trace, track and isolate only allowed the virus to spread far and wide than it would have and thus result in even more cases and deaths.

The government should be criticised for failing to follow up on its promise to ramp up its testing, tracing, tracking and isolation and not encouraged to abandon it!

It is very possible that the government did not lift a finger to impose SI 267 for fear it will be accused of ruining Christmas!

What would real ruin Christmas is hundreds of thousands of very serious sick people in our hospitals, clinics and homes and the endless traffic into the cemeteries to bury the dead. Many of those with all the coronavirus symptoms will be listed down as having malaria or some such other disease because it is Zanu PF government policy to falsify the official covid-19 figures.

The regime is desperate to hide evidence of its blundering incompetence in handling the corona virus pandemic and bragging for having the lowest covid-19 figures in the region is a bonus!

Zimbabwe like many other countries in Africa has clearly been spared the worst of corona virus pandemic this far, the omicron variant could change all that. This is not the time for us to relax our guard, the little of it, for the sake of a few brownie points as the one who saved Christmas. 

The omicron variant threat to health and death is real and both Zanu PF and MDC must stop playing politics with people’s lives!