-
Eswatini: Swaziland King Was Secretly Hospitalised With Coronavirus
Swazi Media, 21 February 2021
King Mswati III, the absolute monarch of Swaziland (eSwatini), has revealed that he was hospitalised for more than 10 days in January after testing positive for coronavirus. Read more »
-
Eswatini: Swaziland King Admits Kingdom Fails to Be a First World Nation
Swazi Media, 20 February 2021
King Mswati III, the absolute monarch of Swaziland (eSwatini), has admitted his poverty-stricken kingdom will not attain 'First World' status by 2022. He had been claiming this was… Read more »
-
Eswatini: Covid-19 Recovery in Jeopardy As Purchase of Vaccine Halted
Swazi Media, 10 February 2021
Swaziland's coronavirus recovery strategy has been derailed after Minister of Health Lizzie Nkosi announced the tiny kingdom would no longer use the AstraZeneca vaccine. Read more »
-
Eswatini: Slow Roll Out of Coronavirus Vaccines in Swaziland, Health Workers to Get Priority
Swazi Media, 4 February 2021
Only 3 percent of the Swaziland (eSwatini) population are likely to get coronavirus vaccines in the first phase of inoculations, according to the kingdom's Minister of Health… Read more »
-
Eswatini: Swaziland Hospitals Short of Body Bags As Coronavirus Deaths Rise
Swazi Media, 3 February 2021
Hospitals in Swaziland (eSwatini) have reported a shortage of body bags for corpses because of the number of deaths from coronavirus. Read more »
Here's How King Mswati is Handling Covid-19 Crisis in eSwatini
In January 2021, the government of eSwatini announced that it would vaccinate all its 1.3 million citizens against Covid-19, setting aside at least U.S.$14 million to do so. This comes after the country's prime minister Ambrose Dlamini died of Covid-19 at the age of 52, in a South African hospital in December, 2020. According to Health Minister Lizzie Nkosi, the government will no longer be using the AstraZeneca vaccine which they would have received from the COVAX Facility, the global vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organisation. After weeks of speculation and denial, King Mswati III finally admitted in a speech on February 19, 2021, that he too had suffered from Covid-19 and was hospitalised for more than 10 days. He further stated that there was an antiviral drug, which he did not name, that could be used to treat the illness. The kingdom of eSwatini has recorded almost 17,000 Covid-19 infections and 644 deaths. Nkosi told Reuters the government would consider doses from Pfizer or any other shot endorsed by the WHO.
InFocus
-
A newspaper owned by the royal family has hit back at U.S. Ambassador to eSwatini Lisa Peterson after she called for the kingdom's constitution to be changed to stop absolute ... Read more »
-
With almost one-third of adults living with HIV, eSwatini has the highest percentage of people living with HIV in the world. The country is also severely affected by a tuberculosis ... Read more »
-
Ncamiso Ngcamphalala, President of the Economic Freedom Fighters-Swaziland (EFF), has been charged with sedition for criticizing King Mswati III on the Swati Newsweek website. In ... Read more »
-
In eSwatini, access to food has become increasingly difficult during the extreme lockdown that was imposed by the authorities in a bid to bolster efforts to curb the spread of ... Read more »
-
The government of Eswatini has dismissed as fake news, reports that King Mswati III - the last absolute monarch in Africa - is "critically ill" with COVID-19. The reports began to ... Read more »
King Mswati III of Eswatini disembarks from a plane at Sochi International Airport as he arrives to take part in the 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, Russia, 23 October 2019.
