Gulu aims at vaccinating 150,000 people against Covid-19

William Onyai, the Gulu District Health Educator, says campaign will last for a week.

Onyai adds that the campaign aims to vaccinate 93,795 people for the first dose of the vaccine and another 62,960 for the second dose.

At the moment, Onyai says, health officials in both the district and city have vaccinated 3,228 people in the last three days.

Reportedly, the health ministry sent 98,981 doses of vaccines for the mass vaccination campaign. The vaccines, according to Onyai, comprise 1,573 doses of Sinovac, 6,518 doses of Moderna vaccines, and 90,890 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines. At the national level, Uganda, with a population of 45 million, has recorded 164,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and 3,594 deaths. Dr Diane Atwine, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Health, says the low numbers of infections was due to strategic interventions from government. “We had to go with our own home-grown solutions to safeguard the population.Our decisions were based on science, including lockdowns. We did not want to wait until hundreds were dying and to look at our options. Decisions were made in accordance with risk. If we delayed, our health system would be overwhelmed and more lives would be lost, said Dr Atwine. At the start of the year, the minister of health said that by the end of March every Ugandan should be vaccinated and so will be required to present proof of full vaccination to access public transport services effective 1st April, 2022. The Minister for Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, said Ugandans would have been given enough time to have been vaccinated by the date stipulated and so all passengers aged 18 years and above will have to present Covid-19 vaccination cards. These cards must indicate a full dosage and, for older Ugandans, the ones above 50, a booster dose. The original date for passengers with proof of vaccination to be allowed to use public transport was Monday, next week, but the government withdrew this condition. The cancellation of the directive came barely a week after it was announced by President Yoweri Museveni. The president had said that this was part of the preconditions to the full reopening the economy and allowing public service vehicles to board passengers to full capacity. The Works and Transport Minister Gen Edward Katumba Wamala, however, noted that it would be hard for public transport operators to distinguish between authentic and fake vaccination cards, yet some already vaccinated travelers never received their cards from the Ministry of Health. To accommodate this scenario, Aceng said that by the end of March, Ugandans will have been given enough time to get fully vaccinated and so must have their genuine cards ready. She also revealed that the government will be able to validate real vaccination cards and isolate phony ones through a system that will cancel out any forgery of certifications. According to records from the Ministry of Health, only 4 million people have been fully vaccinated so far out of the targeted 22 million. In the past seven days, 11,222 cases have been confirmed positive with 105 new patient admissions in the last 24 hours according to Ministry of Health records.