HARARE – Zimbabwe declared its deadliest day in the battle against the coronavirus on Saturday after five people died – three of them at home before they were tested.

The ministry of health reported 40 new cases on Saturday, pushing the total number of cases to date to 982.

It said 30 of the new cases were local transmissions which include 13 health care workers, 10 of them at Mpilo Central Hospital in Bulawayo.

Between March 20 when the disease was first detected in Zimbabwe and June 30, just seven people had died. But in the first 11 days of July alone, 11 people have died – a major poser for the government which is contemplating tightening lockdown restrictions.

The ministry of heath said three of the deaths occurred in home settings while two died in hospital. None of the five appear to have been tested for the virus before their deaths, which the positive tests confirmed during post-mortems.

Zimbabwe has tested just over 356,000 people for the virus and screened 88,000 others, but health experts say the testing is too low and does not give a true picture of the infection rate in the country.

The Chinese government on Sunday donated 30,000 Nucleic Acid Diagnostic Kits which the cash-strapped Zimbabwe government has been struggling to source in order to scale-up its testing.

Over 12.5 million people have been infected by the virus worldwide and over 560,000 had died on July 11, while 6.8 million had made recoveries.