SADC countries should temporarily close borders to all human traffic to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus across the region, a nurses’ union leader has said.
President of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZINA), Enock Dongo, said the closure of the country’s borders was one of the options that the government needed to consider. He said:
Our government and other SADC countries should try by all means to stop the spreading of Covid-19 by curtailing the movement of people from one country to another.
At the moment, our systems as SADC countries do not seem to be adequate. How were those 75 people (returnees) not tested in those countries where they came from?
SADC countries should work together. If governments have to feed their people from the countries where they are, then that should be done.
This comes after thousands of Zimbabweans have returned home from South Africa and Botswana resulting in a spike in the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19.
However, Health and Child Care Minister Obadiah Moyo said Zimbabwe cannot prevent citizens from returning where they belong.
Moyo talks absolute rubbish. Any country has the right to bar entry to a person with an infectious disease, citizen or not. It was common international practice previously to bar entry to persons who had not been vaccinated for yellow fever.