Striking health frontline workers threaten to release Covid-19 patients

Government efforts to deal with coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic  has been done a blow after frontline workers at Kameza isolation centre abandoned patients on Tuesday in strike aimed at forcing the government to pay them allowances.

The uncompromising workers have warned that they will release the patients and seal off the centre if their demand is not attended today.

“We will release all them and seal this place if we are not paid by 5pm today,” said one of them.

He claimed the government has not paid them allowances for the past six months although others gave a contradictory account.

This comes at a time when Malawi continues to register new covid-19 infections with eight more in the last 24 hours, bringing the number of infections to 555 and six deaths.

Chairperson of the Covid-19 Task Force Dr. John Phuka says of the new cases, one is a health care worker from Mzuzu and one is from Blantyre.

“The other six new cases were identified at Mwanza port of entry during routine screening of people entering the country,” he says.

He says of these, three cases are from Blantyre, two from Machinga and one is under investigation.

Phuka says out of the 555 cases, 443 are imported infections and 97 are locally transmitted while 15 are still under investigation.

He says 69 of the total cases have now recovered bringing the total number of active cases to 480.

Phuka says the average age of the cases is 31.9 years, the youngest is aged one year and the oldest is 75 and 70 per cent of the patients are male.

The country has so far conducted 8438 covid-19 tests in 25 testing sites.

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