Govt Plans To Quarantine Returnees In Warehouses, Community Halls & Churches

The government in anticipating a surge in the number of returnees coming from neighbouring countries is planning to use Community Halls, Churches and Warehouses to quarantine them, Newsday reports.

This was reportedly communicated in a communique seen by the publication from  Matabeleland South Provincial Development co-ordinator Sithandiwe Ncube to districts in the region. The communique reads:

May I kindly request that we have plan B for quarantine centres in case schools and colleges open. You can look at such places as community halls, churches if the owners are agreeable and warehouses.
We also need a warehouse in each district where food stuff will be stocked

There is an urgent need to look for alternative infrastructure to quarantine repatriates as schools might open soon and we will be left with nowhere to quarantine them since all the facilities but one, a hotel, are learning facilities. Probably, this is what the newly appointed national COVID-19 coordinator in the President’s Office, Agnes Mahomva, saw as a grey area in the fight to control the spread of COVID-19.

Returnees are being quarantined in schools and colleges at most entry points. Meanwhile, the president has extended the lockdown indefinitely and he said schools will remain closed as a phased reopening of school plan is set in place.

More: Newsday