President Lazarus Chakwera has announced that all schools will close for 3 weeks but students in boarding schools will remain in their campuses until health authorities assess the severity of infection in those schools to
determine whether it is safe for those students to go home.
During this time of containment in boarding schools, the Taskforce will provide additional support to the schools to manage the students’ transition there, including communication with their guardians and parents.
Additionally, Minister of Justice will gazette tomorrow the new guidelines recommended by the Ministerial Committee that the Vice-President convened during the week.
The new rules include, but are not limited to, the following:
- All drinking places must close no later than 8pm, and must not allow the consumption of their goods on their premises. The same applies to all places of business. This will be strictly enforced.
2.Markets must close no later than 5pm, and all merchants and customers must wear a mask at all times.
- All buildings used by the public, whether for business or public service, must be disinfected no less than once a week, and must be fitted with handwashing facilities at the entrance and exits.
- Any person found in public by law enforcement authorities without a mask will be fined.
- No person must be found wandering around socially between 9pm and 5am.
- Employers must reorganize their employees to work in shifts if the work requires physical presence, and to work from home for the next three weeks if it does not.
- Religious gatherings and all gatherings in general must have no more than 50 people under the strictest Covid-19 compliance certified and regulated by the local Council.
In tomorrow’s daily briefing, the Minister of Health will outline the other regulations to be enforced after they have been gazetted.
Chakwera: When it comes to the need to increase
admission space and infrastructure in the
medical facilities, the situation is quite desperate. Although in my six months in office, we set up 400 national treatment units, the current wave of infections has completely overwhelmed these facilities. As such, this new injection of funds will facilitate the immediate procurement of temporary structures like tents and prefabricated treatment units to be erected on existing treatment sites.
My specific directive to the Taskforce in this regard is to scale up the number of treatment units from 400 to 1500 over the next month. Among these should be a 300-bed capacity field hospital at Blantyre Youth Center, another 300-bed capacity field hospital at Bingu National Stadium, a 200-bed capacity emergency treatment unit in Mzuzu, and 100-bed capacity field hospital in Zomba at the Zomba State House.
The needs are many and urgent, and we as Government will do what we can with the resources you have entrusted to us to defeat this enemy. But Government resources are not enough.
I therefore applaud the efforts of private citizens who are already running capital campaigns to raise money to go towards these needs. I would like to call on private sector companies to follow this example and practice their corporate social responsibility in this critical hour. If the Malawian people have been there for your business and given your company profits, you own the Malawian people life-saving
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