Zimbabwe tightens security at isolation centres after 118 escape

Traditional leaders and local authorities ‘enjoined’ to report ‘known absconders’.

Zimbabwe will step up security at its coronavirus isolation centres after more than 100 people who had been put in quarantine ran away, Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said.

The escapees were citizens who had recently returned from abroad, mainly from South Africa and Botswana. The state-controlled Herald newspaper earlier this week quoted the police as saying that 118 people had escaped from various isolation centres.

“Security at quarantine centres is being tightened,” Mutsvangwa told reporters in the capital, Harare, on Wednesday. “Local traditional leaders and local authorities are enjoined to report known absconders and illegal returnees.”

The southern African nation recorded its largest daily increase with 76 new infections, most of them returnees, bringing the total number of cases to 132.

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