COVID-19: Govt decides on vaccine for busy Ugandans

Oct 23, 2021

Odiirah Nansamba, the health ministry public relations officer, said the Government has agreed to administer the vaccine to corporates and busy Ugandans who do not have time.

COVID-19: Govt decides on vaccine for busy Ugandans

Betty Amamukirori
Journalist @New Vision

Ugandan corporates whose work is too demanding and can barely find time to go for the COVID-19 vaccination will be advised to take the single shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Odiirah Nansamba, the health ministry public relations officer, said the Government has agreed to administer the vaccine to corporates and busy Ugandans who do not have time to take the two-shot COVID-19 vaccines such as AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Moderna and Pfizer.

Nansamba made the remarks at the Uganda Media Centre while giving the plan on the rollout of the vaccine to be announced by the ministry next week.

Uganda received the first batch, 196,800 doses of government procured Johnson & Johnson vaccine on October 7. This is part of the nine million doses of the vaccine which the Government is buying at sh290b to cover a population of nine million.

Recently, the permanent secretary of the health ministry, Dr Diana Atwiine, said sh55.8b was disbursed as a down payment to access the vaccine through the African Union Vaccine Acquisition Trust initiative. She said they will be delivered in a phased manner.

Regarding the 700,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine Uganda received on Tuesday, Nansamba said 300,000 doses will be for teachers who got the first dose of the vaccine.

The remaining 400,000 doses will be used to vaccinate 200,000 Ugandans. That is for both first and second doses. The disbursement will be done next week.

Uganda has so far received 6,631,763 doses of various COVID-19 vaccines including AstraZeneca, Moderna, Sinovac, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. So far, 2,575,021 doses have been administered, while 3,021,994 are currently being distributed countrywide.

Of the administered doses, 1,974,045 have been administered as first dose and 600,976 as second dose.

As of October 19, Uganda’s COVID-19 cumulative confirmed case tally was 125,426, deaths were 3,192 while recoveries stand at 96,457.

Uganda’s initial target population for vaccination against COVID-19 was 4.8 million vulnerable populations above the age of 18. However, this has been opened up to all Ugandans above the age of 18 to allow the economy to fully open up.

The health ministry has indicated that there are more vaccine batches in the pipeline. Between this month and December, the country expects to receive a total of 5,342,400 doses of vaccines through donations and 3,260,400 doses through direct procurement by the Government. This is expected to vaccinate about 13.5 million Ugandans.

Those to be received through procurement include 1.2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson and 2,060,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines.

Nansamba said the move to bring on board bar owners and artistes to drum up vaccine uptake has yielded a tremendously positive response from the public.

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