Uganda discharges last Covid patients

There are no more Covid-19 patients admitted in Ugandan hospitals; the last coronavirus patients have been discharged, the Ministry of Health has announced.

However, the risk of contracting Covid-19 is still high and citizens should still take precautions to avoid getting the virus, ministry spokesman Emmanuel Ainebyoona told Daily Monitor.

“[There are] no admissions at the moment. [But] we still have some people testing positive despite a very negligible positivity rate. We need to remain vigilant owing to the fact that some countries still have lockdowns due to an upsurge of Covid-19 cases,” he said.

The latest statistics from the ministry indicate that between April 12 and April 14, only 27 new cases were reported and the average test positivity rate was at 0.3 percent, signifying that the pandemic is under control. Any positivity rate under 5 percent signifies control of the pandemic, according to scientists.

Dr Charles Olaro, the director of clinical services at the Health ministry, last week said there were only two patients with moderate to severe Covid-19 at St Mary’s Hospital Lacor, a private non-profit facility in Gulu. This was a significant decline compared to January 16 when the facility had 435 coronavirus patients.

Dr Olaro and other health experts attributed the decline in infections to the increase in Covid-19 vaccination coverage.

“The uptake of vaccination has been good and there are preventive measures that people are observing individually although people are throwing away masks. Vaccination may not stop you from getting infected, but if you get the infection, it will be mild,” he said.

The country has administered 19.8 million doses out of the 44 million that the government has acquired.