President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni will address the nation tomorrow September 22 on COVID-19 and the measures being taken to control it. The address is set for 8pm.
He is expected to address the long standing issue of a closed education and religious sector and outline new lock-down measures plus a vaccination plan.
Meanwhile, Ugandans will start receiving Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine next Monday, the Ministry of Health said yesterday after receiving the biggest consignment of the life-saving jabs.
Dr Alfred Driwale, the head of immunization programme at the ministry, told this newspaper that “Pfizer vaccination starts on Monday [next week] because we [first] want to mop up doses which are in Kampala. So that once we start vaccination with Pfizer, there is no confusion between many other doses”.
He said the vaccines will be given to priority groups, which include teachers, health workers, people who are 50 years or older, those with co-morbidities and security personnel which total around 4.8 million.
Although reports from a study by University of Oxford in June found that mixing the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines generated a robust immune response against the virus, inducing higher antibodies than the two-shot AstraZeneca-only, Dr Driwale said there will be no mixing of vaccines in Uganda — for now.
Uganda yesterday received a total of 1,674,270 doses of Pfizer, worth about $39.3m (Shs139 billion), directly donated by the government of the United States of America.
A total of 1,777,685 doses of vaccines have so far been administered since the exercise started on March 10 and the country has now received a total of 4,474,190 doses of vaccines which include AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Moderna and Pfizer.
