eBusiness Weekly
The easing of the Level Four national lockdown, and in particular the modest relaxation of curfew and the introduction of a process to allow the next set of businesses to reopen, have been rightly welcomed.
The tight 12-hour curfew, along with the seven-hour operating times for many previously permitted businesses, presented major problems, for a start getting staff to and from work without breaching the curfew considering that Zupco services are yet to reach perfection and the lousy town planning that means that many workers have two long bus rides in each direction.
The very short operating hours meant that businesses like supermarkets and pharmacies, which had no contraction in demand during a national lockdown, had to manage queuing and trying to ensure social distancing, and even factories had the problem of staff needing to sneak off during working hours to buy food and medicine for their families, which meant extended lunch hours and serious productivity problems.
But one lesson was that co-operation, enthusiastic co-operation, with the health regulations and health authorities meant that representations to the Government, on economic grounds, were taken seriously because the authorities found they could trust business owners to follow the rules. The fact that business owners saw the point of the rules, and certainly did not need to have a major outbreak of Covid-19 in a shop or factory, meant that everyone was on the same page.
The second major relaxation is more complicated, allowing businesses out of the essential services and the productive sectors to apply for reopening so long as all staff are tested for Covid-19 and the health regulations are tightly observed.
Here the leadership shown by industrialists and supermarkets must have played a major role in the Government decision-making process. When there is almost universal compliance, without police raids or heavy-handed enforcement, then representations once again can be listened to very carefully.
The Government was faced with two facts. The first was that while infection rates are now less than half those at the beginning of the resumption of Level Four, they are still in that range seen in the third week of December when what is now clear the first signs of the second wave were appearing. These waves start small and build up, so you have to watch the signs like a hawk ow appears to be the rule.
The second problem came from the sequencing of samples which discovered that just over 60 percent of the second wave infections were of that new South African variant, the one that the modest relaxation in cross-border travel, plus the seasonal surge in illegal river crossings, introduced into Zimbabwe, with the relaxation in intercity travel then allowed to spread So now we know why no one was interested in any relaxation of the reimposed travel bans.
The problem with that South African variant is that it spreads more easily, which is why that particular minor mutation, unlike most of the thousands of Covid-19 mutations, was able to win the evolution battle. And it is probable that it leads to more severe symptoms, hence the higher death rate although the link between death and infection statistics is not as simple as dividing one number by another.
Many infected people are never tested, since they either exhibit no symptoms or the symptoms are so minor that the sick person never seeks treatment or testing. The number of deaths, on the other hand, is very accurate since you cannot die in Zimbabwe without a reason being recorded and there is strict adherence to the policy of testing those who have died of any illness. So we probably capture all the dead people infected with Covid-19, even if some would have died anyway from the underlying illnesses.
The large block of symptom-free patients is why there is so much emphasis on testing at reopened work places. While a symptom free person is less infectious, they can still pass on the virus although as they are not coughing or sneezing they are less likely to. So masking of everyone usually works well.
The symptom-free person is less likely to breathe on you, and your mask will probably catch the very tiny droplets from that person. Good personal hygiene means that anything they leave on a door handle or the like will be washed away or killed before it infects you.
Vaccination has now started, although the first two phases will not really help the business sector a great deal. The first stage of the first phase targets health workers and other critical frontline staff, the groups that are most likely to have contact with sick people. The second stage of the first phase targets the elderly, who are largely outside the formal workforce, and those with underlying medical conditions that sharply increase the risk of death when infected, and that will include a batch of workers, although still a significant minority.
But employers still need to ensure that all their staff are aware of the need for vaccination when that group is called in and encourage those with hypertension, diabetes and all the other chronic complaints that these days are so effectively controlled by medication that those with them can put in a solid day’s work five days a week, do take up the offer.
The second phase starts with lecturers and school teachers and continues with others in medium risk groups, but few of the targeted people in this phase are in the business sectors. So it is the third phase, when “ordinary people” go for vaccination. Here most businesses will be encouraging staff to go. It seems obvious that the average chief executive officer will feel a lot better once all staff are vaccinated, and while the process is voluntary most will grab it, especially if they are queuing with their managers and supervisors. So leadership will be important.
The garbage spread on social media sites by conspiracy theorists is on the same level as the ordinary garbage we see on our streets when Harare City Council has no diesel for garbage trucks, that is pretty deep.
Presumably business leaders and managers are clear-thinking enough to dismiss this drivel, and can help their staff understand. But in the end personal example, as with mask wearing and the like, will be the most decisive arguments.
Businesses may be able to go further. The Government is keen on what are called public-private partnerships, but has made it clear that the vaccinations must be free.
There is probably some room for a business, such as major mining company, though to work with the authorities as global vaccine deliveries rise to much higher levels to see if an entire workforce can be vaccinated.
Mines are the obvious example, where a batch of doses is brought to the workplace and the residential village, along with a trained nurse, and the mining company’s donation pays for those doses for staff and their families.
Vaccination is not a cure-all. It appears that none of the vaccines guarantees immunity in all vaccinated, which is the standard position for all vaccines and why when there is a measles or polio outbreak every child is re-vaccinated. But having large groups of immune people creates the herd immunity, which simply means that almost everyone a sick person comes into contact with is immune and almost everyone a non-immune person meets is immune or at least well.
This is why, though, that the World Health Organisation and every switched-on public health authority in the world has been stressing that regardless of vaccinations that standard precautions we have now all grown so used to must continue for some time, in fact until there are no infected people and Covid-19 and all its mutations are extinct.
So even when infection rates reach very low levels, these personal precautions will need to be enforced, again something that business managers are going to have to do. We all saw the results of the complacency in November and December, and hence the need for leadership right down the line.
Predictions are, even if everything goes well, that it will be the end of next year before Covid-19 is finally defeated, and that is from the more optimistic of the experts. So virtual meetings, no big physical meetings, and no social gatherings seem to be the order of the day for a long time. In any case most of us now realise how much time we wasted in physical meetings, and travelling to and from those meetings, so Covid-19 has accelerated the changeover to digital and virtual.
And online business has increased, as one can now see with the growing number of small delivery trucks carrying personal orders, again an advance and an opening for new businesses, including that interesting person, whose bottle store must be closed, now using small vans emblazoned with their website making liquor deliveries, quite legally, and so staying in business.
