President Dr Lazarus Chakwera says school may reopen early September as COVID-19 cases and deaths are on the rise.
Chakwera made the remarks in his weekly radio address last night.
The president says Government is assessing the possibility of reopening schools next month.
“For instance, in the education cluster of the Taskforce, guidelines have already been developed on what schools need to do to reopen safely. In fact, we will start assessing the readiness of each school this coming week so that the schools that meet our safety standards can reopen in early September,” said Chakwera.
As of yesterday, the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 said Malawi had registered 38 new COVID-19 cases, 47 new recoveries, and one new death and the new death was a 50-year-old man from Mzimba north.
According to the Taskforce, all 38 new cases were locally transmitted infections: one was a healthcare worker from Mzimba North, nine each from Blantyre, Nkhata Bay and Nkhotakota, six from Lilongwe, two from Chiradzulu, and one each from Karonga and Mzimba north.
“Cumulatively, Malawi have recorded 5,026 cases including 157 deaths. Of these cases, 1,084 are imported infections and 3,942 were locally transmitted. Cumulatively, 2,623 cases have now recovered bringing the total number of active cases to 2,246,”
“The average age of the cases is 36.8 years, the youngest case being aged 1 month, the oldest being 98 years old and 67 % are male. The country has so far conducted 38,451 COVID-19 tests in 45 COVID-19 testing sites of which 705 tests have been done in the past 24 hours,” said a statement issued by the Taskforce.
According the Taskforce, yesterday’s Malawi’s data indicated that the country had surpassed 5000 confirmed cases since the first reported cases on 2nd April 2020 and this showed that the disease continues to spread in the country.
