The government has received over 134 oxygen concentrators from UNICEF a move which will boost the former’s efforts to fight the novel coronavirus that has killed 12 people in Zimbabwe so far, the Daily News reports.
Speaking at the handover ceremony, Health Ministry Deputy Minister Dr John Mangwiro said the donation would allow Zimbabwe to have more beds to enable institutions to attend to COVID-19 critical cases:
This equipment will increase the capacity of hospitals to treat moderate to severe Covid-19 patients. The arrival of these 134 oxygen concentrators will translate into an increase in the number of beds available for treatment of this category of Covid-19 patients from current 45 beds to 179, bringing this close to 80 percent of the required beds for this category in the country. In the past, we had to refill the oxygen tanks elsewhere and was very inconvenient as it meant that patients could go for a long time without oxygen.
Zimbabwe has as of this morning recorded 926 COVID-19 cases including 12 deaths and the government has always emphasised that people maintain social distancing and other measures to try and curb spreading the virus as they say the country is not ready to mitigate the virus if cases soar to unprecedented levels.
More: Daily News