Mozambique: Lifting of Total’s cordon sanitaire in Afungi still unscheduled – A Verdade

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Mozambique: Lifting of Total’s cordon sanitaire in Afungi still unscheduled – A Verdade

2:42 CAT | 02 Jun 2020

in file CoM

Although the French oil major Total has indicated that it may resume work on the natural gas project in the Afungi Peninsula, Cabo Delgado province, this month, @Verdade has learned that the lifting of the cordon sanitaire imposed on April 1 after the diagnosis of the first coronavirus infection there, still has no date set.

Director-General of the National Institute of Health Dr Ilesh Jani announced on Sunday (31) that the outbreak of the new coronavirus in Total’s Afungi camp “is under control. (…) Now, work is being done to disinfect the camp, where there are still nine [active] cases. Disinfection can only end when these cases are discharged. We have also installed permanent sentinel surveillance for those workers at greatest risk.”

Although responsible for 92 of the 254 reported positive Covid-19 cases in Mozambique, the facilities of the French oil company leading the Mozambique LNG natural gas project are no longer the epicentre of the pandemic, but are will not be returning to normal any time soon.

“The normal that this camp and others are going to return to is a different normal than it was before. It will be a normal in which the rules will be very strict, because the camp constitutes a closed environment where there is a high risk of transmission of this type of virus. So these camps will have to find a new normal to return to. We at the camp, where we have been working intensively for the past few weeks, believe that we have been able to outline the prevention and infection control measures that have to be implemented in order to return to this new normal,” Dr Jani explained.

Asked to comment on Total’s announcement that activities on the Afungi peninsula would resume in June, the chief epidemiologist clarified: “At this moment, when activities can return to this new normal is under discussion between the camp management company and the Ministry of Health. I think that over the next week a decision will be made on how normal the new normal will be and when non-baseline activities will resume, because the camp is currently performing only essential maintenance work.”

“The Afungi case has taught us valuable lessons about how such camps should work,” Dr Jani said, “and this could be very useful in helping similar camps run by large enterprises in the Mozambique adopt prevention and control measures that will eventually make it possible to resume full economic activity.”