Health minister Dr Kalumbi Shangula has acknowledged the decline in Covid-19 cases over the past month, saying there has been a massive drop in the number of new infections, hospitalisation and deaths in Namibia.

The minister said this at the handover of respirators by the University of Namibia (Unam) to the ministry in Windhoek yesterday.

“The third wave of the pandemic has affected all corners of our country. It is, however, gratifying that we have started to observe a positive trend marked by the decline in the number of new cases,” Shangula said, encouraged the nation to maintain the trajectory.

In an interview with New Era, Shangula said the decline in the number of positive cases has been attributed to the public’s cooperation towards the health measures.

“The public is really cooperating, and we have executed restrictive measures such as the lockdown, curfew, we are still trying to minimise the interactions between people. Covid-19 transmits through interactions of people and once we limit that, we will be able to achieve our goal of combating the virus,” he added.

Meanwhile, by 4 September 2021, the country recorded 116 new Covid-19 confirmed cases - a total of 220 395 people have received one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, while 126 306 had received two doses.

Shangula said this has brought the desired results of what they aim to achieve.

“We are happy that our efforts to regain the upper hand in combating misinformation from anti-vaxxers is bearing fruits. The task ahead is to ensure that almost every Namibian is vaccinated and that is what we are looking into,” he stated.

Despite positive results towards fighting the ongoing pandemic, Shangula said it is still an uphill climb to reach herd immunity.

“We are calling upon the public to get vaccinated,” he said.

Expressing the same sentiments, Ben Nangombe, executive director of the health ministry said although there is an indication that the public health measures that the government has put in place are working, the nation needs to keep complying with the regulations put in place.

“We are not out of the woods yet. If we let our guards down, we are going to see another spike in covid-19 cases and we don’t want to get there,” he said.

Nangombe said many people getting severely sick, hospitalised, and dying are mainly those who have not gotten the vaccine.

“Vaccines do work, they have worked in other parts of the world and they will work here and we are encouraging people to get vaccinated,” he urged.

- ashikololo@nepc.com.na