According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been 74,260 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 752 deaths in Uganda in the period from January 3 to June 24. This means that the number of Covid-19 deaths has seen a 10-fold increase since the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in Uganda in March 2020. At the same time, a total of 935,184 vaccine doses were administered as of June 23. In other words, less than 2% of the population of 44 million has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, in spite of vaccination being seen as the only hope to protect populations. Obstacles to access to the vaccines for poor countries like Uganda remain, although public funds were dispatched last year for buying enough doses.
The most unfortunate part of the current situation is that the Covid-19 situation in Uganda has turned into a blame game, while people on the sidelines are dying. While the government blames the people for not adhering to official Covid-19 guidelines, Ugandans are angry because of the mismanagement of the resources allocated to the pandemic response. Although there is a very concrete need to work on this together, the back and forth between the people and the government continues.
*The views of the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Africa Speaks 4 Africa or its editorial team.