Former health minister Bernard Haufiku who leads the Covid-19 task force team, speaking in his own capacity, has said with the rising cases of community infections, Namibia has now reached a stage where experts feared the most.
Haufiku said the concern right now is whether the country is going to lose lives, as Kuisebmund recorded the highest number of infections in 24 hours over the weekend.
Inspector-General Sebastian Ndeitunga has also ordered a stop to the issuance of travel permits out of the Erongo Region, the hardest hit so far.
The education ministry backtracked last minute on Sunday on the decisions to reopen schools.
President Hage Geingob is expected to announce drastic actions regarding the escalating situation.
“I said if this virus is to go into the informal settlement then we are dealing with an inferno,” said Haufiku during a live interview on the Early Morning Scoop.
What made the situation get out of hand?
Haufiku has openly said that a number of factors played one after the other to cause the situation in the Walvis Bay to get out of hand.
Chief among these is the politicization of the virus where Haufiku said the leadership in the region has been fighting each other to score political scores ahead of the November elections.
He said one doctor too had to be disciplined by the health ministry after he failed to cooperate.
Haufiku pointed at the issue of truck drivers, a lack of regional preparedness and uniformity across the regions.
Although the health ministerial team been working round the clock to trace contacts, Haufiku said, “We didn’t succeed to trace the movement of people on Walvis Bay”.
A failure to agree on the setting of a Covid-19 hospital in Walvis bay has also left Haufiku stunned as he said that that was “Derailed, and I don’t understand why”.
He added that decisions in Walvis Bay to lockdown were imposed on people without consulting them for ideas on how to successfully carry out the process.
“We must work with the people; they need to give us advice. We didn’t do well on that aspect because some people felt left out,” he said.
From this point onward, Haufiku said attention has to be placed foremost from within and now what is happening outside and to make sure hospitals are well provisioned with ventilators.
We’ve reached a stage we feared the most – Haufiku
