The health ministry and Erongo regional governor have not been quite upfront on whether Covid-19 case number 26 in Walvis Bay was a community infection or not, despite an official report that the individual never travelled anywhere.
Governor Neville Andre said investigations were still under way to determine how the 44-year-old could have been infected, echoing the official report of health minister Dr. Kalumbi Shangula.
“We are tracing the people that he might have been in contact with but officials are still working on that person but he is at the hospital,” said the governor.
The latest case comes in the wake of independent councillor Knowledge Ipinge having ordered the shut down of Standard `bank after case number 21 visited the institution a few weeks ago.
Added to that, case number 22, whom the health ministry said never came in contact with case number 26, had also wondered in the community for almost two weeks.
In the meantime, Wavis Bay will see its first stage lockdown ending a minute before midnight on the 8th of June 2020 and by the time of the publishing this article, no decision had been made yet on either to lift or re-impose the lockdown.
But a preliminary investigation carried on the town has revealed that sites for burying deceased persons due to the virus were yet to be identified.
Ipinge has come out to say that the investigating team did not consult with him.
“At this stage i do not know whether i am liable to derail with this situation or not because i also read the press release and funny enough the team was in my constituency and they didnt consult with my office, they didn’t approach me as the chairperson of the disaster risk management committee so i wouldn’t know what the motive is or what the reasons for that are.
Some of these issues are issues that the disaster risk management committee at constituency level has actually dealt with already back in March. So our plan of initially building a hospital facility in the constituency has actually made provisions for a morgue as well as how to go about handling the bodies of those that may die due to Covid-19,” said Ipinge.
Despite authorities stopping him from closing down Standard Bank in order to contain the virus after case number 21 visited there, Ipinge said it was not time to play the blame game.
By Monday the 8th of June 2020, Namibia had recorded two more cases of Covid-19, brining the total to 31.
This came by way of two female Namibians,one being a student, who had travelled from India via South Africa into Namibia.
