The Uganda Human Rights Commission- UHRC has raised concerns over the low rate of covid-19 vaccination, following records from the Ministry of Health, indicating that by July 30 2021, only 902,293 and 233,950 people had received their first and second jab respectively.
Uganda is targeting to vaccinate at least half of its population before the country returns to normalcy.
However, Dr Patricia Achan Okiria one of the Commissioners at UHRC says that the number of vaccinated people constitutes only a minimal percent of the targeted total population of 22 million people.
She says that mass vaccination of a large population will help produce immunity among the population and also call for full reopening of the country.
Dr Achan says the lockdown has had adverse effects on various spheres of life of the population.
Uganda received an additional 586,080 Covid-19 vaccine doses last week, including 300,000 Sinovac vaccine doses donated by the Chinese government and the rest are AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the Norwegian government through the Covax facility.
This brings to 1.7 million, the total number of vaccine doses received through COVAX, and directly from the governments of India and China.
The commission also expressed concern about members of the public who not wear masks, don’t practice social distancing and flout curfew regulations, which could expose them to COVID 19.
