Rwanda’s Health Ministry has confirmed six new cases of the novel coronavirus bringing the total number of patients with COVID-19 disease to 17.
The new cases include a French woman, 30, whose domestic partner had been previously confirmed positive, along with their son aged 10 months as well as a Swedish man, who arrived in the country on March, 3, and reported symptoms on March 18.
The rest are Rwandese nationals who were returning to the country. One of them is a frequent traveler who reported symptoms on March 18, whereas the other arrived in Rwanda on March 19 from Doha, Qatar.
According to the Ministry of Health, all patients remain in stable condition, isolated from other patients and people who came in contact have been traced for further management.
“The tracing of all contacts has been conducted for further management,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
The government has directed all who arrived in the country in the past two weeks to self-quarantine for 14 days from the day of arrival and follow all the self-quarantine guidelines given by the ministry.
The Rwandese government this week announced travel restrictions including halting all passenger flights in and out of the country.
In bid to curb the spread of this pandemic, the government also ordered the temporary halting of schools, places of worship and large gatherings that include weddings and conferences.
The government also introduced new measures to lock down bars to minimize cases of infection.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe confirmed its first case of coronavirus on Friday.
A 38-year old man who returned from the United Kingdom on March 15 tested positive.
In a statement, the ministry said the man, who visited Britain a week ago and returned home in Victoria Falls, tested positive for the disease following prescribed laboratory tests.
The ministry identified the person as a 38 year-old Caucasian male resident.
“This evening, Friday 20th March 2020, the National Microbiology Reference Laboratory at Sally Mugabe Central Hospital confirmed that a suspected case of COVID-19 has tested positive.”
The patient travelled to Manchester, United Kingdom, on March 7th and returned home eight days later after passing through South Africa.
“After arrival he put himself on self-quarantine at home as per our advice to all travelers coming from COVID-19 affected countries. On realizing that he was not feeling too well he contacted his general practitioner by telephone advising him that he had a persistent cough and sneezing. The GP alerted the local COVID-19 Rapid Response Team who immediately went to assess him and recommended that he continue self-isolation at home. Specimens were collected and ferried to the Rerefence lab for testing,” the statement read in part.
According to the Ministry of Health, the person continued with self-isolation at home “and is now showing signs of recovery after supportive management at home.”
The ministry noted that “as a result of our preparedness, we managed to identify this first case in a timely fashion and ensure that he was appropriately managed. Our teams are now engaged in contact tracing and are being assisted by the patient himself. We call for the nation to be calm as we deal with this first cases of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe.”
Several suspected cases of coronavirus have been cleared in Zimbabwe following laboratory tests in the country and the Southern African Development Community testing center in South Africa.
The global death toll for the coronavirus pandemic as it spreads around the world has surpassed 10,000 people. COVID-19 has infected more than 244,500 people.
