Tanzania is experiencing an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases and its healthcare facilities could be quickly overwhelmed, the United States said on Wednesday, reported Reuters.
In a statement, the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam said it was aware of a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 cases since January.
“The practice of COVID-19 mitigation and prevention measures remains limited … healthcare facilities in Tanzania can become quickly overwhelmed in a healthcare crisis,” the statement read.
Although the U.S. embassy did not give figures for the surge in infections, it said that limited hospital capacity throughout Tanzania could result in life-threatening delays for emergency medical care.
Last month, Tanzania’s President John Magufuli raised doubts over the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and warned his health ministry against rushing to adopt any vaccine. He, in fact, urged the people of his country to continue to put their trust in God.
The president advised people to go for homespun precautions such as steam inhalation, without offering data or scientific evidence, as he claimed they were better than dangerous foreign vaccines. He has ordered officials to promote herbs to remedy COVID-19 symptoms.
The current state of the coronavirus in Tanzania remains unknown as the president had declared the country to be COVID-free and ordered the health authorities to stop testing and keeping a track of coronavirus infections or deaths in the country. The east African country stopped publishing coronavirus data in April last year. The last time the numbers were reported Tanzania had 509 COVID-19 infections and 21 deaths in total.
The Tanzanian president also rubbished imported COVID-19 testing kits, saying they had returned positive results on a goat and a pawpaw fruit.
Magufuli’s decision to stop testing was widely criticized globally by public health experts, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the African Centre for Infectious Diseases Control.
