The Republic of Uganda on Saturday received two batches of the Covid-19 vaccines totalling 580,000 doses from China and Norway to bolster the government’s efforts in vaccinating the population.
The batch of 580,000 doses, 286,080 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a donation from the Government of Norway, while the remaining 300,000 of the Sinovac vaccine are a donation by the Chinese government.
The new vaccines are meant to supplement the initial 1,139,200 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that Uganda received in March and June 2021.
With only 902,992 people vaccinated so far, with the first dose and 240,771 having completed the second dose of the targeted 22 million, the minister said more efforts are needed to ensure government beats the target.
“This points to a widening gap of individuals due for the second doses and the larger Ugandan population that needs to be inoculated yet we have inadequate vaccines in the country,” she said.
The minister said the government will in the coming days be identifying groups of people to receive the Sinovac vaccine from China.
Aceng applauded the Norwegian and Chinese governments for supporting Uganda’s efforts to have the population vaccinated against the deadly Coronavirus.
The Chinese Ambassador to Uganda, Zhang Lizhong and his Norwegian counterpart, Arne Haug applauded Uganda for her efforts in fighting the pandemic.
The vaccines were later handed over to the Uganda Medical Store for storage.
Uganda has in the past received 864,000 doses of the Covid vaccine from the World Health Organisation, 100,000 doses from India and 175200 doses from France.
The development comes a day after the government partially lifted the 42-day lockdown after a reduction in Covid infections registered by the country daily.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, Uganda has had 93927 cumulative Covid cases since March 2020 but 83115 of these have fully recovered.
As of July 29, the country has also registered 2690 Covid deaths since March last year.
