By Spy Uganda
Kampala: Uganda will receive an additional 175,200 doses of the AstraZeneca covid vaccine from the COVAX facility this Wednesday 16 June 2021.
This was confirmed by the Ministry of Health’s senior Public Relations Officer, Emmanuel Ainebyoona on Monday saying the vaccines will arrive in Uganda on Wednesday 16th June at 22:25 hrs.
Uganda received its first batch of the AstraZeneca vaccines on 5th March 2021 from the Serum Institute of India, through the COVAX Facility
According to the ministry of health, 786,160 people have been vaccinated against covid-19 using the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Health ministry Permanent Secretary says they hope to get additional vaccines by the end of July and Uganda targets to vaccinate 49.6 percent of the total population which is about 21 million in a phased manner.
Catherine Ntabadde, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) communications specialist recently revealed that there’s a lot of 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.
Uganda has recently registered a spike in covid-19 amidst vaccines shortage which has overwhelmed the health care system with several active cases on admission in different health facilities.
The cumulative number of covid-19 cases in Uganda now stands at 63, 099, 48,480 recoveries, and 434 fatalities.
