By Ndatenda Njanike

THE Zimbabwe Association of Funeral Assurers (ZAFA) has agreed that funeral parlours shall treat all bodies as COVID-19 contaminated except for road accident and homicide cases.

In a statement released Wednesday, ZAFA agreed that all funeral service providers were to bury all sudden death bodies within 24 hours.

There would be no removal of bodies from homes or any other place before opinions could be solicited from medical practitioners on the possible cause of death.

“All bodies to be treated as COVID 19 contaminated except road traffic accident and homicide which may be treated as special cases.

“As such, we must strictly adhere to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) guidelines.

“No removals are to be done from home or any other place until there is an opinion on the cause of death by the medical practitioner.

“This therefore means we must notify health officials before doing any removal from home.”

Bodies at hospitals could only be removed if the cause of death has been confirmed at the hospital to ensure the safety of health staff.

Government had passed that all COVID 19 related deaths would have state supervised burials as they did for the first victim Zororo Makamba.

This comes as the country battles to contain cases of the world pandemic which on Thursday rose to nine. The first case was confirmed exactly two weeks ago.