The Ministry of Health has issued an advisory urging Ugandans especially of advanced age to seek booster doses for COVID-19 vaccine but the numbers turning up for the jab has been low. As a result, some of the stocked vaccines have expired.
According to a statement by WHO, the new vaccine is recommended for use as a single dose among adults and that it was found to have 64% efficacy against symptomatic disease and 92% against severe COVID-19.
Dr. Brenda Apio Oketch, a member of the team of researchers studying the attenuated vaccine at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) says that they have been collecting SARS COV 2 viruses locally from people who get infected which are grown in the laboratory and deactivated with chemicals.
She said participants will be divided into three groups. The first one will get one jab, the other two jabs, and the last one three jabs to see if they get protected against developing the symptomatic disease, critical illness requiring hospitalization, and if they are protected against emerging variants such as the latest omicron variant.
On Tuesday at Lira Cathedral Square, by 10 am, the health workers were ready to vaccinate, but there were no people. At Adyel Division and Lira Bus Park, the exercise started by midday and at the end of the day, only 67 people were vaccinated.
The country received the first batch of Johnson and Johnson consisting of 196,800 doses on October 8 and to date, a total of 650,000 doses of the single-dose drug have arrived. But they have since been shelved raising questions especially among people who prefer a single dose jab.
The District COVID-19 task force created 14 vaccination centres in the area, but the centres can hardly serve the high number of people that are turning up due to inadequate vaccine doses.
Kasaija told the MPs that there are two solutions to the COVID-19 vaccine which include locally manufacturing vaccines, and sourcing for vaccines for all Ugandans.
Lugolobi however, says that "the biggest challenge we have right now is that people who got their first dose from centers in Kampala are locked down in Wakiso and yet we have got are few doses."
The previous week, the district received 5,370 doses and has therefore received a total of 8,370 doses for health workers and people who are due for the second jab.
This is the fifth supply agreement UNICEF has signed for COVID-19 vaccines on behalf of the COVAX facility following previously announced agreements with the Serum Institute of India, Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The agreements have enabled the facility to make deliveries of the vaccine to the 92 countries that they cover.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, officials of the Association said that they had received several reports that health workers are being forced into immunization with threats of withholding their pay in the wake of high abstinence by the initial target population.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) gave the Oxford/Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine emergency use validation making it the second vaccine candidate to be approved after the Pfizer BioNtech last month. Both vaccines are not recommended for use by pregnant and l
As the programme was being launched on Thursday, the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) also announced that the entity will be facilitating payments by providing advance procurement commitment guarantees of up to USD 2 billion to the manufacturers on behalf of member countries.
This revelation was made at a teleconference meeting convened Tuesday evening following an announcement by global pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTec that their vaccine candidate was showing 90 per cent efficacy.
