The Uganda Prisons case has registered a total of 1,150 COVID-19 cases since June 2020, Frank Baine the Prisons spokesperson says. The cases include prisoners, staff and inmates.
Baine also reveals that only one person has so far succumbed to the pandemic. The deceased was terminally ill and got infected while admitted at a hospital. This was a female prisoner.
A total of 1,040 of these cases have recovered, leaving the active cases at 110. According to Baine, the active cases are asymptomatic and are being cared for at 4 treatment centres; in Mbarara, Jinja, Moroto and Gulu.
“The rehabilitation programs were affected, because some of them involved going outside were all put on hold and because of that, we have been limping because there are other activities which were being used to supplement the activities of prisons and they have since stalled” Baine said.
He added that they faced a lot of challenges when the country went to lockdown in March and they had to quickly create isolation centres for prisons not to allow prisoners coming from out to join the mainstream prisons before they had finished at least two months guarantee that they were COVID free.
“There was a lot of constraint especially in terms of locating prisoners, taking prisoners to courts as they were not operating and that’s how the numbers started building. We also had to quickly implement the other SOPs; washing hands, observing social distance & ensuring strict hygiene and of course restricting the visitors and movement of staff” Baine said.
He said the process was observed and until June, they did not register any cases.
