UNICEF Malawi COVID-19 Situation Report: 1-7 October 2020
Highlights
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Through UNICEF partnership with Clinton Health Access Initiative, 968 health workers from 12 districts of the 29 local councils have been trained in infection prevention and control.
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During the reporting period, about 236,200 people were reached with COVID-19 messages through door to door campaigns, mobile van and community drama sessions and social media. This includes 378 people with disabilities. The total number of people reached with the messages since the beginning of the pandemic is at about 1.13 million.
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To date, 15,147 people in Dedza, Salima and Mangochi have been reached with messages on continuity of education, adolescent nutrition, eliminating child marriages with support from UNICEF.
Situation Overview
As of 7 October, 5,796 cases of COVID-19 have been registered in Malawi. The overall downward trend continues with 27 new cases registered in the reporting compared to 33 in the previous week. The total number recoveries registered in the reporting week (330), is higher than the number of new cases recoveries (31) over the same period and again, there has been a downward trend recently. Consequently, the total number of active cases is declining and now stands at 1,048, which represents only 18 per cent of all registered cases. Of the total cases, 4,650 are locally transmitted infections and 1,153 are imported. One new death was registered since the last report and the total number of fatalities is at 180 (CFR = 3.1).
While active tracing and monitoring of contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases are ongoing, the country continues to experience shortage of test kits. During the reporting period, there has been a small improvement in tracing contacts and reporting of alerts from 556 in the previous week to 773. However, this is still inadequate. As of October 6, Malawi had 5,786 reagents across all the eight testing sites, these reagents can support the country to test symptomatic suspected cases for a period of seven days. UNICEF is in the process of procuring of consumables worth US$ 360,000 that will enable testing of additional 65,000 samples. Also, the MoH through College of Medicine have initiated the validation of Antigen-detection assays that were recently prequalified by WHO to expand the testing capacity.