A medical expert has urged people to continue observing prevention measures, saying the downward trend in new Coronavirus cases should not make people relax.
Writing on his Facebook page, Dr Titus Divala who is an Epidemiologist College of Medicine, said Malawi is not out of the woods yet as transmission is still high in the country.
In January, Malawi had its deadliest month of the pandemic as the country broke records on daily cases and new deaths as over 1000 new cases and more than 40 deaths were being recorded on some days.
Over the past four days, the country has seen a downward trend in cases with the highest daily cases being recorded on Wednesday (328).
Wednesday’s 328 new cases came from 2,365 tests translating to positivity rate 13.9 percent. On Tuesday, 302 new cases were detected from 1,981 tests representing a positivity rate of 15.2%
Divala noted that the positivity rate was above 30 last month but has now taken a sharp decline. He, however, warned that Malawi has not managed to control disease transmission.
“Transmission is still very high, there are still many people who have not had the virus, people we need to protect from infection as much as possible so that we can close the tap of severe disease and bad outcomes. To be reasonably comfortable, we need to look out for a consistent weekly positivity rate of lower than 5%,” he said.
He added that there are still many patients receiving hospital care now and this will take a few weeks to change.
He said: “So at health system level, it will still take a little longer before feeling the drop in admissions, and even longer to return to bearable pressure.”
The medical doctor then urged people to follow prevention measures, stay at home if possible, wear masks, observe social distancing and wash hands.
He also urged the government to enforce mandatory mask wearing and banning on all non-essential gatherings.
