BY PHUMELELE MKHONTA
MBABANE- The raging war against COVID-19 seems to be calming down.
As part of the de-escalation towards COVID-19 response, the Ministry of Health has launched a weekly COVID-19 Statement.
Worth noting is that since the emergence of the first case of COVID-19 in the country, the said ministry has been publishing daily COVID-19 statements.
The Ministry of Health published their first weekly COVID-19 statement yesterday. The last daily COVID-19 statement was published on September 3, 2022.
According to a statement sent out by Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi on September 3, 2022 titled ‘De-escalation of the COVID-19 Response’, the ministry started de-escalating its response on September 1, 2022.
Nkosi said the country had been responding to the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, during which five waves had been experience.
“Government’s commitment at the highest level has seen the response measure improving with each wave, resulting in a much lower fifth wave that happened between April and June 2022.
“Currently, the new number cases and deaths due to COVID-19 remains low and vaccination rates continue to increase- with more the 43 per cent vaccinated,” said the minister.
She went on to say that as part of de-escalation of the response, the release of daily COVID-19 statements and situation reports would change from daily to weekly aggregated reports.
“It should be noted that this will only change if there is a surge in number of cases, whereby these will revert to daily reports,” said Nkosi.
She further thanked health workers who worked tirelessly during the COVID-19 pandemic, in uncertain and high-risk situations.
“It should be noted though that the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over, as there are still be people diagnosed with COVID-19 as recently as last week and new variants are being discovered in other parts of the world. Eswatini is not safe from COVID-19, as long as the word is not safe,” said the minister.
