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Manhunts are underway in Malawi and Zimbabwe Thursday after hundreds of people -- including dozens infected with the coronavirus – busted out of quarantine centers.

In Malawi, more than 400 people recently repatriated from South Africa and elsewhere fled a center at a stadium in Blantyre, jumping over a fence or strolling out the gate while police and health workers watched, the Associated Press reports. Police and health workers told reporters they were unable to stop them as they lacked adequate protective gear.

At least 46 of those escapees had tested positive for the virus, while some of those who fled told reporters they had bribed police.

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And in Zimbabwe, police spokesman Paul Nyathi said officers were “hunting down” more than 100 people who escaped from centers where a 21-day quarantine is mandatory for those returning from abroad.

In this April 24 photo, people wait to fetch water from a row of communal taps that the group Doctors Without Borders provided in a suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe. For people around the world who are affected by war and poverty, the simple act of washing hands is a luxury, even during the coronavirus pandemic. In Zimbabwe, clean water is often saved for daily tasks like doing dishes and flushing toilets. (AP)

“They escape and sneak into the villages… We are warning people to stop sheltering them. These escapees are becoming a serious danger to communities,” Nyathi said.

Nearly all of Zimbabwe’s 75 new cases this week came from the centers that hold hundreds of people who have returned, sometimes involuntarily, from neighboring South Africa and Botswana.

The quarantine centers have become “our source of danger,” Health Minister Obadiah Moyo told a special parliamentary committee this week.

CORONAVIRUS CASES IN AFRICA TOP 100,000

Both Zimbabwe and Malawi have fewer than 200 confirmed cases but regional power South Africa, where many in both countries go to seek work, has more than 25,000. South Africa has the most cases in Africa, where the continent-wide total is nearly 125,000.

Zimbabwe’s information minister, Monica Mutsvangwa, on Wednesday told reporters the government is increasing security at the schools, colleges, and hotels used as quarantine centers. Government spokesman Nick Mangwana suggested that security officers guarding centers with high walls and razor wire might be receiving bribes to allow people to leave early.

Zimbabwe’s government is also worried about people crossing porous borders and failing to report at quarantine centers. The information ministry has begun sharing a hotline number and asking people to stop harboring “border jumpers” and those who “abscond” from quarantine.

EAST AFRICA FEARS ‘TRIPLE THREAT’ FROM CORONAVIRUS, FLOODS AND LOCUSTS

Malawi saw another mass escape earlier this week when 26 people left the Mwanza border post while waiting for test results, according to the Associated Press. People arriving in the country face a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

The Blantyre district director of health and social services, Gift Kawalazira, said they were overwhelmed when more than 2,000 people turned up at the border post in Mwanza over the weekend. Holding some in the stadium was a last-minute resort after plans to use education facilities failed for lack of funds, he said.

“They will be moving around while trying to elude authorities,” Kawalazira said of the escapees.

People need to understand that it is not punishment but we are only doing this to protect the general public," he added.

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Few prevention measures could be seen at the stadium, with people leaving freely to buy food from nearby vendors. They told reporters they had received no food from authorities since Monday.

Relatives of some of the returnees entered the stadium to visit, giving loved ones hugs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.