By Spy Uganda
Kampala: Uganda’s National Medical Stores (NMS) on Wednesday said it has started the distribution of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines across the country.
Trucks have been dispatched to different parts of the country to distribute the 300,000 Sinovac doses donated by the Chinese government, NMS spokesperson Sheila Nduhukire said in a statement.
According to the ministry of health, Uganda expects to receive at least 12.3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by early 2022.
The country aims at vaccinating about 22 million people, or nearly half the population, as a measure to put the pandemic at bay.
READ ALSO: AU Boosts Fight COVID-19 Campaign With 400M Vaccine Doses Across African Continent
As of Tuesday, about 1.2 million people had been vaccinated since the exercise started in March this year.
The development comes after New global coronavirus cases and deaths appear to be levelling off after increasing for nearly two months, according to the World Health Organization.
“After increasing for nearly two months, the global number of COVID-19 cases and deaths was stable last week,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference on Wednesday. “But it is stable at a very high level: more than 4.5 million cases and 68,000 deaths.”
READ ALSO: COVID-19: Norway Dispatches First Donation Of Vaccines To Uganda
The situation also varies across regions. For example, the Americas saw an 8% increase in new cases last week, and the Western Pacific reported an increase of 20%. Europe and the Americas reported increases in new deaths of 11% and 10% respectively, according to WHO.
“As long as this virus is circulating anywhere, it’s a threat everywhere,” Tedros said.
Tedros and other WHO members during the press conference continued to advise against booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine while low-income countries struggle to get enough doses to cover their most vulnerable.
