A boy of Lusaka's Bauleni Compound adheres to the masking up COVID-19 guideline - Picture by Tenson Mkhala HEALTH Minister Dr Jonas Chanda has announced that the country has recorded 1,514 new Covid-19 cases and eight deaths out of 8,598 tests conducted in the last 72 hours. In a statement, Wednesday, Dr Chanda stated that there were currently 6,886 active cases, of which 6,464 (94%) were under community management while 422 (6%) were admitted to Covid-19 isolation facilities. “Allow me to start my update today by thanking our hard-working teams across the country for their continued tireless and selfless hard work under difficult circumstances. We have noted the progress being made in tracking cases and their contacts, a key intervention to halt community spread, and we also continue to note a reduction in the number of admissions to our isolation facilities. We acknowledge the gains made as a result of your diligent efforts and are hard-pressed to sustain these efforts to avoid any reversal in the gains made. We remain deeply concerned for the safety and wellbeing of our health workers, a number of whom we have lost to C0vid-19 (MTSRIP). We remain committed to protecting them at all costs and pledge to provide our caregivers around the country with the best possible care. We also acknowledge the need to re-focus on prevention interventions and behaviour change strategies within our communities,” Dr Chanda stated.