Malawi’s Alleluya Band in Coronavirus quarantine after arriving from Italy

Members of the Catholic church sponsored Alleluya Band are back in the country from Italy where a number of activities they had scheduled were cancelled and were forced to be indoors due to the ravaging coronavirus disease.

Band leader Coss Chiwalo said the band members are now in government medical staff monitored quarantine at their base in Balaka.

“We are not showing any signs of the disease, our temperatures are normal but we have to be in quarantine for 14 days as one of the measures to ensure that Malawi is safe from the epidemic,” he said.

Chiwalo said the band members were restricted to their  hotel since their arrival in Rome as this was the time the disease was on the prowl.

He said all the scheduled activities in Italy, which included raising money for a children’s hospital, Comfort Clinic, were immediately cancelled.

A journalist, who is studying in China and arrived this week for a holiday wrote of her horror on how the government is treating people from the coronavirus prone countries.

Yvonne Sundu wrote: “It feels good to be home. Yes, home away from home but nothing had prepared me for a weird welcome at KIA in the face of the Coronavirus epidemic.”

Sundu said she had been told a couple times that there are thermo scanners at the arrivals lounge at Kamuzu International Airport but there were none on her arrival.

She said before boarding at Beijing Capital International Airport, her temperature was checked at two different points.

She said just after alighting from the plane, again, together with the rest of passengers had our temperatures checked at Bole.

“What I found positive at KIA was how I and about five Chinese nationals were separated aside after noticing from our health declaration forms that we were coming from China.

“After a brief session with a man wearing what is far from the hazmat masks I have been seeing medical personnel at the front line of the epidemic donning, he dropped what I would call the biggest joke in the fight against this public health issue, ‘here is the number of the Lilongwe DHO, call them and give them directions of where you will be staying so that they can be coming to check your temperature,'” she said.

Sundu said she would be in 14 day quarantine with or without government supervision.