14 Sep 2020

 The Presidential COVID-19 Task Team is planning to introduce the Geo Fencing bracelet to monitor movement of people on self-isolation and quarantine.

Briefing the nation recently, the deputy coordinator of the team, Professor Mosepele Mosepele said the bracelet would be connected to their system to alert them of any movement made by someone in quarantine or self-isolation.

He indicated that they were introducing such tracing method as they had observed that people move around while on self-isolation and quarantine.

On other issues, Prof. Mosepele said they would in future use antigen based point of care tests, which he explained would allow for results to be released within 30 minutes. He also noted that they would introduce sharing of COVID-19 results through text messages, whatsApp or email.

Prof. Mosepele noted they were particularly looking at negative results to share through such platforms to reduce backlog as many people tested negative.

He said the April lockdown helped in containing local transmissions as well as border surveillance, which led to early detection of imported cases.

However, Prof. Mosepele said border surveillance delayed community testing. He expressed concern at the increasing number of local cases, saying although the Greater Gaborone July lockdown delayed a surge temporarily, a surge of cases followed the lifting of the lockdown with which eventually surpassed border cases.

Prof. Mosepele indicated that border cases were now declining, a move attributed to the decline of cases in neighbouring countries especially South Africa.

Greater Gaborone COVID-19 Zone, he said was driving the national cases. He said the highest burden of spread was in the Greater Gaborone zone and was now a source of COVID-19 cases in most parts of the country.

He cited as common causes of spread of COVID-19, lack of social distancing, use of masks at the work places, large attendance at gatherings, failure to self-isolate when showing flu/cold symptoms as well as delayed isolation and quarantine.

Since the first reported case of COVID-19 case in March, Prof. Mosepele said, Botswana had reported a total of 2 252 cases.

From this number, as of September 8, 1 152 are Batswana with 597 active cases and 546 recoveries.

However Prof. Mosepele said recovery cases might have complications in the long run.

Thus far, Botswana has a total of 10 deaths, with the latest death having occurred on September 8, of a young lady aged between 20 and 30 years who was on a life support.

Prof. Mosepele further explained that as of September 7, there had been 126 new cases with 114 Batswana and very few cases detected at the borders since only 12 cases were registered.

He said border cases continued to be registered but at very small numbers. However, he said it was an important number as it represented the burden of threat that would had been missed at the borders and would had been cases entering Botswana and significantly contributing to local transmission.

Prof. Mosepele noted that to date a total of 1 099 had been transferred out, adding that a total of over 138 000 tests had been done, with over 72 000 being border tests and over 65 000 as local tests. ENDS