Hundreds escape from quarantine

MANHUNTS have begun after hundreds of people, some who have tested positive for Covid-19, fled quarantine centres in Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Recently repatriated from South Africa and elsewhere, more than 400 escaped from a centre at a stadium in Blantyre, Malawi, jumping over a fence or strolling out of the gate while police and health workers watched.

Police and health workers said they were unable to stop them as they lacked adequate protective gear.

In Zimbabwe, police spokesperson Paul Nyathi said officers were “hunting down” more than 100 people who escaped from centres where a 21-day quarantine was mandatory for those returning from abroad.

“They escape and sneak into the villages…

“We are warning people to stop sheltering them.

“These escapees are becoming a serious danger to communities,” Nyathi said.

Nearly all of Zimbabwe’s 75 new cases this week came from the centres that hold hundreds of people who have returned, sometimes involuntarily, from South Africa and Botswana.

The quarantine centres have become “our source of danger”, health minister Obadiah Moyo told a special parliamentary committee this week.

Both Zimbabwe and Malawi have fewer than 200 confirmed cases, but South Africa, where many in both countries go to seek work, has more than 25000.

Zimbabwean Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said the government was increasing security at the schools, colleges and hotels used as quarantine centres.

Government spokesperson Nick Mangwana suggested that security officers guarding centres with high walls and razor wire might be accepting bribes to allow people to abscond.

Zimbabwe’s government is also worried about people crossing porous borders and failing to report at quarantine centres.

Malawi saw another mass escape earlier this week when 26 people left the Mwanza border post while awaiting test results.

Blantyre district director of health and social services Gift Kawalazira said they were overwhelmed when more than 2000 people turned up at the border post in Mwanza at the weekend.

Holding some in the stadium was a last-minute resort, he said.

“They will be moving around while trying to elude authorities,” he said of those who escaped.