An accelerated COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign has kicked off on Monday, September 27, 202, in Kampala Metropolitan Area with city dwellers urged to show up and get the COVID-19 jab.
The mass vaccination drive targeting high-risk groups including persons aged 50 years and above and people aged above 18 but with underlying medical problems like diabetes, hypertension, heart, kidney, and liver disease
Other groups Health workers, teaching and non-teaching staff, Security personnel, and students in post-secondary institutions aged 18 years and above at the earliest opportunity.
Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the Ministry of Health spokesperson, says the weeklong accelerated vaccination campaign, being carried out by the Ministry of Health in partnership with the Kampala City Authority, Wakiso, and Mukono districts 2,976,403 people by Friday, October 3, 2021, with the exercise expected to be rolled out across the country, targeting 4.8 million people by December.
Ainebyoona said the vaccination campaign in Kampala Metropolitan are carried out using AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines and later Sinovac.
“All persons starting the vaccination will receive Pfizer vaccine as their first dose and will after one month (4 weeks) receive their second dose of Pfizer,” he said, while all persons who started with AstraZeneca and are due for the second dose after 2 or three months will be provided AstraZeneca in the same locations.
“Persons who started vaccination with Sinovac and are due for the second dose will be informed shortly on the date to turn up,” he Ainebyoona explained.
Uganda is scaling up coronavirus vaccinations with the arrival of another 1.6 million doses from the United States. But with many Ugandans still reluctant to get the shot, the Ministry of Health last week took the unusual move of reaching out to people at bars and entertainment venues.
Last week, nurses dressed in white pitched white tents at two bars in Kampala to offer protection from the coronavirus. Some patrons, who appeared tipsy, said they had come to encourage others to get the vaccine.
The Ministry of Health says many people are avoiding hospitals and clinics, so it has partnered with beverage companies to set up the unusual vaccination sites.
Ainebyoona said the ministry had to be creative to get past some people’s hesitancy toward vaccines, caused by misplaced fear of side effects or misinformation.
So the ministry will use “any readily accessible and available place in the city. It doesn’t matter the location,” Ainebyoona said.
Uganda has so far received more than 5 million doses of vaccines from abroad. This includes 1.64 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 647,000 doses of the Moderna product from the U.S. government.
The vaccination points in the Kampala Metropolitan Area are distributed as indicated in the tables below:
