Declaring victory over COVID-19, Tanzania’s President John Magufuli said that ‘the corona disease has been eliminated thanks to God’.
President Magufuli attributed the success to prayers and fasting by people of Tanzania and said: It gives me joy to be the leader of a country that puts God first, God loves Tanzania’.
Tanzanians have lauded their president on social media for ‘defeating COVID-19,’ saying that this will restart the economy, leading to more jobs and business opportunities for the people in the country.
As the country celebrates the defeat of COVID-19, the World Health Organization raised concerns over the government’s strategy and said that Tanzania is belated in releasing COVID-19 data. The government has allegedly stopped publishing data on the number of COVID-19 cases in the country.
The last day official data was released on April 29 which showed that there were 509 cases, with 21 deaths in Tanzania.
President Magufuli however, said that only four patients were being treated in the largest city, Dar es Salaam last week.
‘We need to be careful because some of these donations to fight coronavirus could be used to transmit the virus. I want to urge you Tanzanians not to accept donations of masks, instead tell the donors to go and use them with their wives and children,’ the president said.
Last month, Tanzania’s government turned down a US embassy warning that said that hospitals in Dar es Salaam were ‘overwhelmed’ and that the chances of contracting the virus was ‘extremely high’.
The President has constantly said that the health crisis has been exaggerated and asked people to attend services in churches and mosques, claiming that prayers ‘can vanquish’ the virus.
The Tanzanian president and several other African leaders have received a herbal tonic claimed to be a cure for the deadly virus by the president of Madagascar. It is, however, unclear if it has been given to patients in Tanzania.
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