By Our Reporter
The Ministry of Health will this week receive more 175,200 doses of the Covid-19 vaccines, a donation from Italy.
According to the Ministry of Health’s senior Public Relations Officer, Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the vaccines will arrive in Uganda on Wednesday 16th June at 22:25 hrs.
The contingent will arrive at a time Uganda is battling the second wave of the pandemic, with skyrocketing Covid-19 cases on admission, and fatalities.
Uganda first received the Astra-Zeneca Vaccine donation of 864, 000 doses on 5th March 2021, a contingent that was donated from the Serum Institute of India, through the COVAX Facility.
This was later coupled with another donation of 100,000 vaccines by the Government of India.
By press time, a total 786,160 Ugandans have been vaccinated against covid-19 using the AstraZeneca vaccine, this according to statistics from the health Ministry.
Catherine Ntabadde, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) communications specialist recently revealed that there’s a lot a possibility of receiving an additional donation of 688,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in August.
Last week on 10th June 2021, the World Health Organization listed Uganda among the 9 in 10 countries set to miss the urgent covid-19 vaccination goal.
According to the organization, the pandemic is trending upwards in 10 African countries, with four nations recording a spike in new cases of over 30% in the past seven days, compared with the previous week.
“72% of all new cases were reported in Egypt, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia and over half were recorded in nine southern African countries,” WHO noted.
The cumulative number of covid-19 cases in Uganda to-date stands at 63, 099, with 48,480 recoveries and 434 deaths.
