ZAMBIA has recorded 108 new COVID-19 cases and zero deaths out of the 1,077 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, according to Health Minister Dr Chitalu Chilufya.

And Dr Chilufya says there has been continued improvement in adherence levels to the public health measures set up to fight COVID-19.

Speaking at the daily COVID-19 briefing in Lusaka, Thursday, Dr Chilufya said 108 new cases had been recorded and 68 patients discharged from isolation centres.

“We have 108 COVID-19 cases out of 1,077 tests done. We had no mortalities. We discharged 68 patients in the last 24 hours. We have a number of patients in our facilities, 30 are admitted at the Levy COVID-19 facility and out of these, 18 are on oxygen and five are critically ill in ICU. In other COVID facilities countrywide, we have 11 patients with five patients on oxygen,” Dr Chilufya announced.

And he said there had been a continued improvement in adherence levels to public health measures.

“We continue to report marginal improvements in adherence to public health measures because of our strong engagement with the community. We thank the community leadership in the markets, on the streets, the Commuters Association of Zambia and all stakeholders that are working with us at the community-level to strengthen community engagements,” he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Chilufya said the Ministry would donate 25,000 face masks to markets to enhance community engagement towards preventing the spread of the disease.

“We would like to emphasize that community engagements will be the high impact intervention to disrupt COVID-19. We thank our cooperating partners, today, the German government and the US government that have come on board to support the fight against COVID-19. They are speaking to the fundamental pillars through donations of PPEs and equipment and medicines. We also want to emphasize that in order to strengthen this response to COVID-19 at the community-level, with the support we are receiving from various stakeholders, such as the Association of the Indian Community in Zambia, we will continue passing on these PPEs to the community. And today, we will donate 25,000 face masks to the community leaders at market-level so that they can continue on the programme that they have been doing,” said Dr Chilufya.