Covid-19: State of emergency in Mozambique causes confusion to be clarified today – govt

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Covid-19: State of emergency in Mozambique causes confusion to be clarified today – govt

11:13 CAT | 02 Apr 2020

Photo: Lusa

Any confusion over the state of emergency declared in Mozambique to counter the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to the hasty closure of some commercial establishments, will be clarified on Thursday, the government announced yesterday.

“In fact, there would have been some confusion that would have resulted in the hasty shut-down of some commercial institutions,” Council of Ministers spokesman Filimão Swazi said at the end of an extraordinary meeting of the cabinet, called to consider the emergency measures to be applied until the end of April.

The results of the Council of Ministers’ deliberations would be published on Thursday, he added.

Several stores in central Maputo closed earlier on Thursday afternoon, with some vendors claiming to have information that they should do so, and others claiming to have received orders from the police.

Speaking to Lusa, a police source in Maputo denied that any such orders had been given.

Filimão Swazi said that some information circulating on social media, not only “does not correspond to the truth”, but was even the subject of debate in the media.

Closing stores “will only be justified” when the country is “in Stage 4” of a scale of restrictions beginning with Stage 1, the least severe.

“For now, what we do is regulate, limit, subject to conditions the functioning of public and private services, not necessarily proceeding as we have seen in other countries of which we already have examples of what is called a ‘lockdown’. These will be Stage 4 measures,” Swazi explained.

Mozambique has been in Stage 4 since midnight yesterday “and these will be translated into the Council of Ministers decree to be published tomorrow [Thursday]” and released at a press conference called for this purpose.

“It is not yet a case of closing commercial establishments or [establishments] of any nature. Yes, it will be a case of subjecting their functioning to some conditions,” he added.

Mozambique has so far officially recorded 10 cases of Covid-19 infection, with no fatalities.

The new coronavirus responsible for the current pandemic has already infected more than 905,000 people worldwide, of whom almost 46,000 have died and at least 176,500 are considered cured.

Source: Lusa