Covid-19 forces Harare City Council to close offices

Lloyd Ndemo

Harare City Council has temporarily closed Town House and three other buildings after some members of staff tested positive for Covid-19.

Rowan Martin, Cleveland House and Remembrance Drive offices are the other buildings that have been affected.

Acting Mayor Councillor Enock Mupamawonde said all committee and management meetings will be done virtually to minimise human contact and gatherings.

The Mayor added, “we continue mandatory testing of our employees. prior to this notice we have been already taking preventative action in all our offices as guided by the Ministry of Health and Child Care and World Health Organisation to ensure the protection of our staff members and stakeholders.”

Meanwhile, a local bank has closed seven branches and five offices after 35 members of staff tested positive for Covid-19 and one of them succumbed to the virus.

In a statement the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe (CBZ) Chief Executive Officer, Dr Blessing Mudavanhu said, “we would want to advise our stakeholders that as a precautionary measure.”

“CBZ group embarked on an exercise to undertake Covid-19 PCR tests on all its staff prioritizing frontline and essential support staff. To date out of over 900 tests conducted, regrettably 35 of our staff members have tested positive for Covid-19. One of our staff members sadly passed on.”

“In view of the results outcome CBZ braches and offices where staff tested positive will be closed from today to allow time to thoroughly clean and disinfect.”

Zimbabwe has to date recorded 2704 Covid-19 cases and 36 deaths.