COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzania

[4] Subsequently, reports of the spread of the virus have been actively gathered over the years and relevant policies put in place as situations unfold.

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 City, Hubei Province, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.

[9][7] 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.

[13] 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 are in a critical state on ventilators.