MDC Alliance co-vice president Tendai Biti presenting his party’s state of the economy report on Tuesday, 24 November 2020
CLAIM: Zimbabwe had the least number of COVID-19 tests, per capita, in the world.
Source: MDC Alliance co-vice president Tendai Biti during his “state of the economy” address.
RATING: INCORRECT. Zimbabwe’s COVID-19 testing rate, while lower than many reporting countries, is not the worst in the world and bettered two of the three countries cited in the claim by MDC Alliance vice president and former Finance Minister Tendai Biti.
Biti made the claim while presenting his party’s economic policy statement on November 24, basing his assertion on data up to the end of April.
“By the end of April, less than 9,000 COVID tests had been carried out in Zimbabwe and if you compare, in percentage terms, we are the country, across the globe, including Malawi and Mozambique, including Swaziland (Eswatini), that had carried out, in per capita terms, the least number of test on the entirety of the globe,” Biti said.
Testing data
Official data from Zimbabwe’s health ministry shows that, by April 30, the country had conducted 8,314 COVID-19 tests. However, this figure combined the definitive PCR tests as well as the less trusted rapid diagnostic tests.
The last available data for PCR tests before April 30, was for April 27, when some 2,466 PCR COVID-19 tests had been done.
At the close of the period under consideration, Malawi (population 18.1 million) had recorded 831 COVID-19 tests, according to its health ministry.
As of April 30, Mozambique (population 29.5 million) had reported 2076 COVID-19 tests, according to government data.
Eswatini (population 1.1 million) had run 1051 COVID-19 tests by April 22, according to a Prime Ministerial statement of the same date. Eswatini reported a further 890 tests between the prime minister’s April 22 statement and the end of that month, giving a total of 1941 tests.
Comparisons
While it is unclear whether the countries cited by Biti were reporting exclusively PCR tests, Zimbabwe’s testing rate of 176 PCR tests per million population (at the time in question) remained better than Malawi’s 46 tests per million population and Mozambique’s 70 tests per million population.
Of the countries cited by Biti, only Eswatini had a superior testing rate to Zimbabwe’s, 1,765 tests per million of its inhabitants, at the end of April.
This trend is also confirmed by Worldometer, a data aggregation site which draws statistics from official sources.
Worldometer’s coronavirus update for May 1 shows Zimbabwe had a better testing rate than 30 countries at the end of April.
Current situation
As of November 23, Zimbabwe had registered 161,032 PCR tests (11,502 tests per 1 million inhabitants), compared to Malawi’s 72,281 cumulative tests (3,993 tests per a million inhabitants) reported on November 25. Mozambique had 224,854 tests by November 24, or 7495 tests per 1 million population.
CONCLUSION:
Biti’s assertion that Zimbabwe has the worst coronavirus testing rate in the world was not true in April, nor is true now. Available official data from several sources, including the countries he cited as examples, shows that while Zimbabwe’s testing was lower than most countries, it wasn’t the worst in the world, as claimed by Biti.
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