The COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzania was a part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached Tanzania in March 2020.
The Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children in The United Republic Of Tanzania uses the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy to monitor reportable diseases and conditions to detect and respond to the leading causes of illness, death, and disabilities. Subsequently, reports of the spread of the virus have been actively gathered over the years and relevant policies put in place as situations unfold.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzania was a part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached Tanzania in March 2020.
The Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children in The United Republic Of Tanzania uses the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) strategy to monitor reportable diseases and conditions to detect and respond to the leading causes of illness, death, and disabilities. Subsequently, reports of the spread of the virus have been actively gathered over the years and relevant policies put in place as situations unfold.
Background
On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.
The case fatality ratio for COVID-19 has been much lower than SARS of 2003, but the transmission has been significantly greater, with a significant total death toll.
In May 2020, Fatma Karume, a human rights activist, said authorities are discouraging people from going to hospitals to avoid overwhelming them, but they are not giving adequate guidance about the virus. Karume said: "When you are disempowering a whole nation by withholding information and creating doubt on how they should respond to the crisis, the outcome can be disastrous."
COVID-19 related news are censored as misinformation or disinformation. The distribution of non-governmental information has been made into a criminal offence by the government. The government released a list of qualified persons to educate the public about COVID-19, and directed that all media source information only from those on the list. Multiple individuals were arrested and fined because of spreading information about COVID-19. The lack of transparency and restricted freedoms have drawn criticism from Reporters Without Borders.
However, on 28 June 2021, President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced COVID-19 statistics to the public for the first time since May 2020, with 100 new cases in Tanzania and 70 people in a critical state on ventilators.
Timeline
March 2020
On 16 March, the first case in Tanzania was confirmed in Arusha. It was a 46-year-old Tanzanian who had come to Arusha from Belgium.
On 17 March, the Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa announced a range of measures, including closing schools.
On 18 March, two other cases in Tanzania were reported.
On 19 March, two new cases were reported, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to six. Five of these cases were identified in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city, with the other case being from Zanzibar.
On 22 March, it was announced that cases had risen to 12.
On 23 March, the Government announced that all incoming travelers from COVID affected countries would be placed in quarantine at their own cost for 14 days.
On 25 March, it was announced that Zanzibar recorded its second case.
On 26 March, the first COVID recovery was announced, of the first Arusha patient.
On 28 March, a third case was recorded in Zanzibar.
On 30 March, there were 5 more recorded cases, including two in Zanzibar and three in mainland Tanzania, bringing the cumulative total to 19.
On 31 March, the first COVID death was recorded, in Dar es Salaam.
April 2020
On 1 April, one new case and one recovery in Dar es Salaam were announced, bringing the cumulative totals to 20 cases, two recoveries, and one death.
On 3 April, a third recovery in Kagera was announced, bringing the active case number to 16.
On 5 April, two new cases were reported in Zanzibar.
On 6 April, a further two new cases were reported in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, bringing the cumulative total to 24.
On 7 April, two more cases recovered, bringing total recoveries to five.
On 8 April, one new case was recorded. President John Magufuli urged the faithfuls to go to pray in churches and mosques in the belief that it will protect them. He said that the coronavirus is a devil, therefore "cannot survive in the body of Jesus Christ, it will burn".
On 10 April, it was announced that there were five new cases on mainland, two new cases on Zanzibar, and two deaths on the mainland, bringing the cumulative case count to 32, and cumulative deaths to three.
On 12 April, all international passenger flights were suspended.
On 13 April, it was announced that there were 64 new cases on mainland, and three new cases in Zanzibar. In addition, two recoveries in Zanzibar were announced.
On 14 April, the Prime Minister announced four more cases in Dar es Salaam, bringing the cumulative total to 53 cases.
On 15 April, Zanzibar health minister Hamad Rashid Mohammed, reported six more cases, two recoveries, and its first death. On the same day, 29 new cases on mainland were recorded. This brought the cumulative total for Tanzania to 88, with cumulative recoveries of 11 and cumulative deaths of four.
On 16 April, six people tested positive in Zanzibar, bringing the total to 94.
On 17 April, 53 people tested positive, 38 in Dar es Salaam, 10 in Zanzibar, 1 in Mwanza, 1 in Pwani, 1 in Lindi, and 1 in Kagera, bringing the total to 147 and cumulative death of 5 people.
On 19 April, 23 new cases were reported in Zanzibar, where 2 people died.
On 20 April, a further 87 people were reported to be infected with the virus, including 16 from Zanzibar. In addition, 3 new deaths on the mainland were reported, bringing cumulative deaths in Tanzania to 10.
On 22 April, the Prime Minister announces the case count had risen to 284, with 11 recovered and the death toll remaining at 10.
On 24 April, 37 more patients had recovered, while 15 more were infected with the disease in Zanzibar.
On 28 April, 7 patients in Zanzibar tested positive.
On 29 April, 196 more people were infected, bringing the total to 480, where 167 had recovered and 16 died.
May 2020
On 2 May, opposition leader Freeman Mbowe called for the suspension of Parliament for at least three weeks after the deaths of three MP's (Gertrude Rwakatare, Richard Ndassa and Augustine Mahiga) of unknown causes in the previous eleven days. He blamed the deaths on COVID-19 and asked for testing for all MP's, parliament staff and family members.
On 4 May, President John Magufuli suspended the head of testing at Tanzania's national health laboratory and fired its director after the lab allegedly returned false positive test results. Magufuli said he had deliberately submitted biological samples from a papaya, a quail and a goat to test the laboratory's accuracy; the lab diagnosed these samples as positive for coronavirus.
On 7 May, it was announced that for Zanzibar, the cumulative total of recorded cases was 134, the cumulative number of recoveries was 16 and the cumulative numbers of recorded deaths was 5. Of the active cases, 41 were at health facilities and 72 were cared for and followed up at home.
The U.S. embassy in Tanzania issued a warning on 13 May that the risk of contracting COVID-19 in Dar es Salaam was extremely high. It believed cases were growing at an exponential rate in Dar es Salaam and other places and expected hospital capacity to be insufficient. Private local broadcaster Kwanza Online TV was subsequently taken off air for 11 months by the regulator for having posted the embassy's warning on its Instagram account.
Tanzanian authorities stopped reporting case numbers in May. When the reporting stopped, the number of confirmed cases stood at 509, the number of recovered patients was 183, and 21 patients had died.
Several truck drivers tested positive at the Kenya border, and Kenya closed the border for non-cargo. The two countries agreed to supply testing and facilities for truckers.
On 21 May, the President announced that colleges will reopen and form six secondary school students will return to school from 1 June, sports will resume from 1 June, and that international flights will resume, without any quarantine, from 27 May.
Opposition activists accused the government of covering up the true scale of the pandemic, claiming that, while the official stats remained stuck on 509 cases and 21 deaths, with no test results being reported since 4 May, at least 412 have died in Dar es Salaam alone, and that 16,000 to 20,000 people have been infected countrywide.
The lack of official data on testing, recoveries, active cases and fatalities generated an interest from epidemiologists and modellers to estimate the true extent of COVID-19 infection in Tanzania. Pearson et al. estimate that Tanzania reached 1000 infected patients at some point between 6 April and 2 May 2020, and 10,000 infections not before 20 April and no later than 26 May 2020. Modelling results published by the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London suggest that the true number of infections in Tanzania between 29 April and 26 May 2020 was 24,869. Pearson et al. calculate that after three months of no mitigating measures being taken, Tanzania should expect between 5,900 and 19 million symptomatic cases, and up to 16,000 additional deaths due to COVID-19. Similarly in 2022, modeling by WHO's Regional Office for Africa suggested that the true number of infections in 2020 was around 14 million and the true number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020 was between 1069 and 12,000.
June 2020
On 8 June, President Magufuli declared Tanzania to be free of coronavirus, which he attributed to the prayers offered by its citizens. There are reports that several COVID-19 test centres shut down following the announcement and that patients displaying symptoms have been denied testing on account of Tanzania having no virus.
On 16 June, the president announced that schools at all levels would re-open on 29 June.
July to December 2020
In July, the government adopted and published new subsidiary legislation introducing mandatory registration of bloggers, online discussion forums, radio and television webcasters, as well as criminalizing the publication of "information with regards to the outbreak of a deadly or contagious diseases in the country or elsewhere without the approval of the respective authorities".
On 6 August, John Nkengasong of Africa CDC expressed his concerns over the lack of data from Tanzania and the detrimental impact on the development and implementation of an Africa-wide strategy.
In August, the government adopted and published new subsidiary legislation banning all local media from broadcasting foreign content without prior government permission, including content relating to COVID-19 in Tanzania.
In December there were reports that a number of patients at the Aga Khan, Shree Hindu Mandal, and Rabininsia Memorial hospitals in Dar es Salaam were coming in with symptoms of coronavirus and subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. Moreover, conspiracies that funerals were taking place in secret at night, and that former president Benjamin Mkapa's cause of death was not heart attack as officially stated, but COVID-19.