MAVUSO TRADE CENTRE TO BE CORONAVIRUS QUARANTINE

MANZINI - The pavilions at Mavuso Trade and Exhibition Centre will be the next quarantine centre for COVID-19 positive patients.

In fact, senators visited the centre yesterday to view and discuss the possibility of upgrading the pavilions into a quarantine centre and they gave the proposal the green light.

According to an invitation which was sent to the senators on Sunday morning, inviting them to the meeting which started at 2:30pm yesterday, the Ministry of Health had noted that a greater number of COVID-19 positive people had mild sicknesses. Therefore, the ministry, which is worried about the capacity of Lubombo Referral Hospital, started looking for alternative isolation centres.

The ministry said the alternative quarantine centre would help ease the beds challenge for COVID-19 positive patients, who had moderate to severe sicknesses.

Options

As it weighed the options, the ministry considered using the pavilions at Mavuso Trade and Exhibition Centre. It said if the proposal was given the green light, the Eswatini Investment Promotion Authority (EIPA) would help to set up one of the pavilions so that government could see how it may work. Isaac Magagula, the Chairman of Senate Health Portfolio Committee, confirmed that as senators, they went to Mavuso Trade and Exhibition Centre yesterday to view the pavilions and discussed the proposal by the Ministry of Health. He said this was necessitated by the fact that the country was hit by COVID-19 and the number of confirmed cases was continuing to rise, as such there was a worry about the capacity of the Lubombo Referral Hospital.

The chairman said since the pavilions were not being utilised, the senators welcomed the idea of upgrading them into a quarantine centre  for COVID-19 positive people with mild sicknesses. He said the modification would not be a complex thing, but like the partition which was done during trade fairs.

However, he said they were still going to consult with the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade over the matter. 
On the same note, the Minister of Health, Lizzie Nkosi, said they were demonstrating what it would be be like before they made proposals and necessary requests. She said they were also looking at other alternatives as well.

On another note, Magagula thanked the international community, the Republic of China (Taiwan) in particular, for assisting the country with equipment for fighting COVID-19.

It is worth noting that currently, the country has recorded 116 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 49 of them are admitted to the referral hospital, while 50 are under home care. At least 12 of the confirmed cases had been discharged after they recovered and there is only one death. The other four are new cases which were announced yesterday afternoon.

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