The President of the Republic called on businesses, public offices, educational establishments and other institutions with large movements of people "to create the minimum conditions for hand hygiene and to be the first to inform the health authorities of any suspicious cases they may detect".
Angola has so far two quarantine centres, the leader of the MPLA said, and "is carrying out an education campaign to alert citizens to the need to adopt new behaviours and social attitudes to prevent the possibility of contracting the virus".
According to João Lourenço, the country is following this worldwide threat "with attention and some apprehension".
"Angola has no confirmed positive case, hence the need to work more on prevention, in order to avoid the framework that we would all like to avoid, bearing in mind that the disease has no cure or vaccine as yet," he said.
In order to safeguard public health and reduce the probability of the pandemic spreading as much as possible, continued the leader of the MPLA, each country must do its part "and, in this sense, Angola is taking prevention measures that boil down to epidemiological health control at the entry of travellers across borders, with particular attention to citizens from high-risk countries, based on the criteria defined by the WHO (World Health Organization)".
Angola has already created the technical conditions to carry out the test locally, said João Lourenço, adding that "prevention is the best weapon of defense against this virus.
To the media, João Lourenço appealed to inform society, but also to educate it, "bringing the advice and instructions of the country's health authorities to the general public".
The appeals also extended to users of social networks to "make responsible use of this important tool of communication, refraining from creating, reproducing or disseminating news, whose authorship is not of the competent authorities".
"To citizens in general, our appeal is to remain calm, follow the recommendations of the Ministry of Health and ignore any news or instructions from anonymous authors", he stressed.
