NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The Tanzanian president has finally acknowledged that his country has a coronavirus problem after claiming for months that the disease has been defeated through prayer.
Populist President John Magufuli on Sunday urged East African citizens to take precautions and even wear face masks – but only locally made. During the pandemic, he expressed concern about goods manufactured abroad, including COVID-19 vaccines.
The president’s comments came days after the country of about 60 million people mourned the death of one of its top politicians, the vice president of the semi-autonomous island region of Zanzibar, whose political party previously said it had COVID-19 . The president’s chief secretary has also died in recent days, although the cause has not been revealed.
Magufuli, speaking on Friday at the funeral of the chief secretary in a national television show, asked the nation to participate in three days of prayer for unspecified “respiratory” diseases that had become a challenge in the country.
Tanzania has not updated its number of coronavirus infections since April, as the president has insisted that COVID-19 has been defeated. Tanzania’s official number of coronavirus infections remains at just 509, but residents report that many people have had difficulty breathing and that hospitals have seen an increase in patients with “pneumonia”.
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, added his voice to the growing calls for Tanzania to recognize COVID-19 for the good of its citizens, neighboring countries and the world, especially after a series of countries reported that visitors arriving from Tanzania gave positive results for the virus.
Tedros in a statement on Saturday called the situation in Tanzania “very worrying” and urged the Magufuli government to take “solid action”. Others who have recently expressed concern include the United States and the local Catholic Church.