Stakeholders in CAR Consult to Prevent Spread of COVID-19 with 5 Confirmed Cases

“Today, as announced by the Head of State, 14 new measures are taking immediate effect, including the closure of the airport for a renewable period of 15 days, with the exception of commercial flights, humanitarian flights, cargo flights and aircraft in difficulty, technical stopovers without disembarkation (...), as well as pre-school, school and university establishments, dance bars, refreshment bars, etc,” Local Media reported.  

In addition, there are restrictions on mourning and marriage ceremonies, not to mention restrictions on movement from Bangui to the provinces, etc.

Bishop Appora also called on the government and the churches to provide accompanying measures in the fight against the pandemic saying, “We can speak of closing this or that, but it is not because a confinement has been made in France or Italy that we are necessarily going to make a confinement in the Central African Republic.”

“As we know, people live from day to day, and not all families have freezers,” Bishop Appora said and added, “There is a lot of thought to be given to this, we must not copy and paste. Government should provide the means to support this fight.”

Speaking at the end of the Tuesday, March 24 meeting, CAR’s Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Augustin Yangana-Yahoté explained that as the chairman of the crisis committee, the country’s President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, wanted to have the point of view of men of God before taking measures in case some of them affected religious institutions.

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“In the near future, the Head of State will take measures on the basis of the opinions gathered during this meeting as well as those of the meetings of the technical committee and the crisis committee,” Minister Yangana-Yahoté stated.

According to local media, CAR’s Minister of the Interior, Augustin Yangana Yahoté, said that the various proposals made by the participants of the meeting were recorded by the government which will make a synthesis of them to the crisis committee that is being set up.

In the meeting which was attended by representatives of the Catholic Church, the Central African Evangelical Association, the Central African Islamic High Council, the country’s Minister of Public Health, Pierre Somsé, made recommendations based on the evolution of COVID-19 in the country.

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.