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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective
Fatalistic or indifferent attitudes are no doubt responsible for increasing numbers of Zimbabweans finding themselves quagmired in the Covid-19 pandemic that daily decimates lives and leaves behind millions of other victims bed-ridden in its wake.

Reports about large crowds of mourners attending funerals in Harare, contrary to a World Health Organisation (WHO) protocol — among other guidelines — prohibiting large gatherings can only point to fatalistic defiance of the guidelines, with Nkulumane and Magwegwe suburbs in Bulawayo being added by our Government to areas already declared as “hotspots” in efforts to curb the spread of the killer virus in point above.

Those defying the guidelines against large crowds at any particular event have reportedly claimed that they followed their “culture” in the way they sent off relatives, friends or neighbours.

But nothing could be a more lame excuse, for neither Zimbabwean nor any foreign culture is known to defy death by deliberately neglecting life-prolonging guidelines.

Members of the public in areas designated as hotspots are known for notoriously thumbing their noses at most if not all of the WHO guidelines — masking up, social distancing and gathering in large numbers, et cetera — thereby endangering the lives of other people.

However, what should be more worrying to the general public of this country is the ironic tragedy of tragedies whereby those who should know better and protect other people’s lives at given times apparently also thumb their noses at the WHO guidelines.

Or are the two vaccinations not entirely protective of the lives of those who receive them against the deadly virus?

We are talking about health-care workers here, doctors and nurses with a frightening figure of 63 of them for instance, having recently been quarantined in Bulawayo at Mpilo Central Hospital after testing positive to Covid-19.

Health care workers in this country were given first priority as frontline workers to receive vaccinations against Covid-19 at the beginning of this year and one would have expected them be now insular to the virus for the safety of patients as the vaccination campaign continues around the country.

Some nurses have been known to members of the public to be reluctant to receive vaccination in the same way as many other members of the public are known to have been and remain indifferent to countrywide anti-coronavirus immunisation campaigns.

But that such a large number of health care workers from one health institution had to be quarantined at the same time is no doubt mind boggling to many who look up to these people as religious followers of their profession’s guidelines to save lives.

When earlier this week this writer asked Mpilo’s acting Chief Executive Officer, Professor Solwayo Ngwenya, if the members of staff quarantined had received prior vaccination, he said: “That information is not readily available.”

Prof Ngwenya’s remarks published in this newspaper in the past no doubt potrayed him to Zimbabwean and other publics as a strong advocate for the implementation of Government and WHO protocols to save lives so he must obviously be troubled by any knowledge of health-care workers contracting Covid-19 at an institution with which he is also associated.

People who visited United Bulawayo Hospitals to be vaccinated last week claimed they were told by staff that the first jab vaccine was “reserved” for hospital staff and had to proceed to a council clinic in town where they were vaccinated, according to one of them.

But one would have expected that all the frontline health workers at UBH as well as at other health institutions would have by now also received both their first and second vaccinations six months after the vaccination programme started.

It therefore appears incumbent on the Government to declare that any worker possessing no vaccination certificate should forfeit his or her job as a way of compelling employers in both the public and private sectors to ensure that all their members of staff are protected against Covid-19.

That ultimatum in addition to the temporary reduction of staff complements cannot fail to reduce or end Covid-19 infections altogether for the revival of an economy seriously embargoed first by illegal Western sanctions and then by the current waves of Covid-19.

In retrospect, this article and wise advice by this country’s public must make it clear to those who defy the relevant life protecting guidelines mentioned above that, by their actions, they court death for both other people and themselves and will “live to see it for themselves, like snuff at the nose,” as our wise African warning goes.