Covid-19 death rate continues to fall

Herald Reporter

Zimbabwe’s progress in defeating the second wave of Covid-19 infections tended to plateau in the middle of last week with the number of new daily cases rising over four days before slumping again at the weekend, but with average death rates and the number of active cases continuing to fall.

One of the reasons for the small upwards blip of new cases on the graph was a large group of construction workers from a single site in Harare, the Ministry of Health and Child Care noted in one of its daily reports. The rolling seven-day average, which smoothens out sudden jumps and drops and takes into account any delays in results from test centres, rose from 88 to 95 over the week to Saturday with a peak of 167 reported cases.

There is a suspicion that part of the rise in daily cases could be due to more complete testing.

The now very low percentages of people tested being positive suggests that those responsible for the testing programmes are reaching more suspected cases, including those with no or very mild symptoms who might have come forward for testing during the peak.

But even that worse day was below the 172 daily average at the beginning of the year and the 217 recorded on New Year’s Day. The peak average on 14 January was 956 before the infection rate started falling.

Active cases continued to fall last week reaching 2 240 on Saturday, finally below the 2368 at the start of the year and less than a quarter of the peak of 10 326 on 16 January.

At the same time the recovery rate has climbed to 89,7 percent, about two percent up over the week.

The death rate continues to fall with daily spikes and troughs but the seven-day rolling average is now down to five deaths a day, having halved over the week, and now only just above the level at the beginning of the year.

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