SPECIAL Advisor to the President for COVID-19 Dr Roma Chilengi has urged citizens to lift their guard and ensure that they adhere to the laid down COVID-19 preventive measures.

In an interview, Dr Chilengi said although there were no new strict guidelines concerning COVID-19 mitigation, people still needed to follow the golden rules and also ensure that they were vaccinated.

“We have not come up with any new guidelines concerning mitigation for COVID. I think the guidelines we made have been preached. Every week on Monday and on Friday in the ministerial statement the measures are always emphasised. I think it’s true that a lot of people have dropped their guard on COVID and I think our message to the public is constant that we need to uphold the COVID prevention measures because COVID is still with us. Especially the hike in numbers that we are seeing now. We will continue to insist that people mask up or get vaccinated, just importantly people getting vaccinated. In institutional settings, congregate settings, especially schools, I think that schools have programmes that must require children to be masked up, that must require sanitizing. But I think where these are elapsing, we need to emphasise that they pick up and lift the guard,” said Dr Chilengi.

“Essentially, to answer your question, we don’t have any new guidelines except for people to ensure that they continue with the golden rules and most importantly to get vaccinated. Well, I don’t have an objective assessment, but I think that we need to emphasise that they lift their guard. It’s the cold season. We don’t want your child going to school and coming back with an infection, nobody wants [that]. Even the school, you don’t want children in your schools being chased out of class, nobody really wants that. The only way to avoid that is [to] make sure you adhere to the rules that are already very well explained.”