DEPLOY MORE POLICE OFFICERS

QUITE frankly, Government will need to employ radical measures to effectively bring down the rising Covid-19 cases.

One of them is to deploy more officers from the Zambia Police Service in highly-populated townships and public places.

This will be a better response than imposing a lockdown!

Clearly, the response among citizens has been indifferent, even as the publicity on Covid-19 has heightened through various platforms.

Information is replete on people getting infected and dying, but the lackadaisical attitude is still at its best.

Some people are on oxygen, yet this is still not alarming among some people.

It is now a matter of life and death and thus Government act tough to enforce sanity.

Once an assemblage of more police officers fill all the townships and public places, the message on the seriousness of the pandemic will sink in the minds of the ordinary citizenry.

While the action may seem extreme, it is acutely necessary. There have been conspiracy theories flying around, with some people blindly contending that Covid-19 does not exist.

Further, some spoilers have been spreading misleading information that the publicity about the pandemic is meant to raise funds through the sale of face masks and sanitisers.

Yet others believe that Covid-19, which started in China, has only affected the Western world and that Africans are immune.

This does not add up and must be expunged! Citizens must simply mask-up, observe social distancing, wash their hands regularly and avoid large gatherings.

Additionally, citizens must avoid unnecessary movements and restrict to 50 or less inevitable situations such as funerals, weddings and ceremonies that cannot be postponed.

It is intensely distressing to see irresponsible revellers drinking beer from the same narrow end of a bottle, under the guise of close companionship.

In other instances, they even share a cigarette, three or more people puffing from the same butt.

This means, therefore, that mere sensitisation and efforts from the multi-sectoral teams have not worked.

The recourse to offloading more police officers onto the streets is thus apt.

Other than that, the cases will keep skyrocketing and we may end up with the bitter complete lockdown and night curfew as has been the case in other countries.

Yes, vaccines have been discovered and soon they will be in Zambia, but citizens must not be complacent.

All citizens need protection against this deadly disease.

It has swept away some of the most productive souls from the face of the earth and it has also taken away the aged, from whom we should have otherwise drawn the much-needed wisdom.

The young have equally been claimed before reaching their prime age.

On Monday, there were 75 patients hooked to oxygen when Zambia recorded 411 new Covid-19 cases with 105 being admitted to isolation facilities. Four people died.

The following day, 14 people died, the highest single-day figure recorded since the pandemic broke out in March last year.

On the same day, 652 new cases were detected. Surely, such a grim scenario calls for an emergency intervention – more police deployment to deal with uncooperative citizens.

During the cholera outbreak, this method worked very well.

It could be the tonic needed!

PURSUING JUSTICE AND EQUITY WITH INTERGRITY