Malawi Govt bans travel to and from CoVID-19 hard-hit countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Brazil

Government has banned travel to and from CoVID-19 hard-hit countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh including Brazil following concerns of the threat of importation of new variants of the virus from other regions and countries of the world.

In her Monday situation report, co-chairperson of the presidential taskforce on CoVID-19, Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said new wave of the pandemic is currently spreading with severe morbidity and mortality impact in these countries.

“The taskforce further noted the particular heavy traffic of travellers to and from the Indian sub-continent and neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Pakistan; and evidence of a COVID-19 positive case that arrived in the country from India in the past week,” she said.

She, however, said all essential arrivals and travel, such as diplomatic and medical travel shall be allowed in.

“Those undertaking essential travel to and from these countries, shall be required to undergo mandatory institutional quarantine at designated hotel accommodation at their own cost on arrival into the country,” she said.

The taskforce has further directed that such travellers must be in possession of a negative PCR-based CoVID-19 test result or certificate for a test conducted no more than 72 hours before arrival in the country.

The taskforce says it will periodically review the situation of the epidemic in South East Asia and advise accordingly.

The decision came about after a review meeting the taskforce had on Monday in which it noted with cautious satisfaction that the number of cases and deaths, admissions to hospitals and positivity rates have declined and remained stable over the past four weeks.

This is “thanks to preventive measures that have been put in place and are being reasonably observed by all members of society”.

In the past 24 hours Monday, Malawi has registered five new CoVID-19 cases, 13 new recoveries and no new deaths with all new cases being locally transmitted — two each from Blantyre and Zomba, and one from Lilongwe Districts.

Cumulatively, Malawi has recorded 34,021 cases including 1,147 deaths (case fatality rate at 3.37%) and of these, 2,139 are imported infections and 31,882 are locally transmitted.

And cumulatively, 31,921 cases have now recovered (at recovery rate of 93.8%) while 134 were lost to follow-up — bringing the total number of active cases to 819.

The taskforce also reports that there was only one new admission in the treatment units on Monday while one case was discharged while currently, a total of six active cases are hospitalised: five in Blantyre, and one in Mzimba North Districts.

The positive cases out of the total on Monday translates to a positivity rate of 3.3% while a weekly positivity rate (seven days moving average) is at 2.2%.

As of Monday evening, 277,442 Malawians have been vaccinated against CoVID-19 with 785 being administered on that day.

Meanwhile, as of Monday, confirmed cases of CoVID-19 from 55 African countries reached 4,513,541 while over 10,600,820 vaccinations have been administered across the continent.

Reported deaths in Africa reached 120,427 and 4,027,042 people have recovered while South Africa has the most reported cases — 1,576,320 with related deaths at 54,186.

Other most-affected countries are Morocco (509,465), Tunisia (301,627), Ethiopia (253,120), Egypt (223,514), Libya (175,753) and Nigeria (164,756). Malawi is at 21 with 34,021 cases

The numbers are compiled by the Centre for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University using statistics from the World Health Organization and other international institutions as well as national and regional public health departments.

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