The government has lifted quarantine restrictions for travelers coming from countries that are dominated by the Delta variant.
Addressing the post cabinet briefing yesterday, Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Monica Mutsvangwa said there is no longer need to quarantine those travelers.
“Considering that 98% of COVID-19 cases in Zimbabwe are of the Delta variant, there is no longer need to quarantine travelers from countries afflicted with the variant, such as India,” she said.
Meanwhile, World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed that a new Covid-19 variant that was first detected in South Africa in May does not appear to be spreading adding that it is monitoring the variant as the virus evolves.
But Zimbabwean health expert Prof Solwayo Ngwenya has warned against complacency.
Ngwenya said the risk to Zimbabwe cannot be dismissed.
While the majority of South Africa’s coronavirus cases are currently caused by the Delta variant – first detected in India – C.1.2 caught scientists’ attention because its mutation was almost twice as fast as observed in other global variants.
Its frequency remains relatively low, however, and it has so far been detected in less than 3 percent of genomes sequenced since it was first picked up in May.
This is despite the fact that it has increased from 0.2 percent to 2 percent last month.
