By Trevor Makonyonga
The town of Norton has recorded it’s first cases of COVID-19 with one of the confirmed cases being a staff member at the local hospital.
This was confirmed by the Norton Town Council public relations department yesterday.
According to reports the hospital staff member is a senior nurse.
“A local covid-19 positive case was confirmed in Norton on Tuesday 13th July. Contact tracing is in progress, with contacts having been identified at the hospital and a private institution. One of the contacts who is a staff of the hospital has since tested positive. All contacts are isolated and are undergoing testing. The NTC RRT is acting according to MoHCC guidelines to ensure that the issue is handled incisively. No NTC staff member has tested covid-19 positive as yet. There is no need to panic as our Medical experts have the situation under control,” reads the statement.
The local governing body has thereby suspended all services that require contact.
The council said, “Because of this negative development NTC has been prompted to temporarily suspend non critical operations to allow for immediate disinfecting of all council premises, have all staff tested and resume normal operations thereafter.Norton Hospital will in the mean time only be attending to critically ill and maternity patients until testing of all the staff has been completed. NTC will continue to offer minimum service of a critical nature such as sewer, water and refuse collection as well payments.”
The lockdown has not been really effective in the town especially in the high density areas and testing should also be done to the general public.
