Zimbabwe police arrest more than 400 00 for coronavirus lockdown violations

Police in Zimbabwe say they have arrested 403 544 people for violating lockdown restrictions since the first lockdown in March last year but 9 950 were arrested this weekend alone.

They arrested 3 459 on Friday, 3 643 on Saturday and 2 848 yesterday.

This is part of a crackdown to curb the spread of the pandemic which has killed 1 326 people as of yesterday.  It has affected 34 552 people but 28 551 have recovered leaving 4 675 active cases.

The pandemic has been more deadly this year with 963 deaths and 20 685 new cases in the past 39 days.

The number of deaths and new cases has been declining over the past week or so since the government extended the Level 4 lockdown and deployed police to control movements of the people.

The current lockdown ends on Monday, 15 February but can be extended or reviewed depending on the situation.

There were 65 new cases and only 10 deaths yesterday and the recovery rate which had dropped to 54% has since improved to 82.6 %.

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