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THE fear and confusion surrounding the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine donated by China and brought into the country this week reflects the failure by government to relay information to the citizens. Health practitioners, teachers and trade unionists have expressed fears over being used as guinea pigs to prove the efficacy of the vaccine amid reports that it had resulted in complications in some countries it has been rolled out. Among some of the concerns, the drug has not been approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO), but is still undergoing tests and the highest efficacy rate it has had is 75% compared to other drugs that are now in wide use, AstraZeneca, Modena, Pfizer, the Russian Sputnik 5 which have had higher efficacy rates. Suddenly, the Sinopharm drug received amid much pomp and fanfare, is now presenting more headaches for government than solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic that has wreaked havoc in the country, claiming more than 1 400 lives since March last year. Government can only blame itself for the dearth of information around the Chinese vaccine. Comments by the head of monitoring and evaluation in the Health and Child Care ministry, Robert Mudyiradima, which circulated widely on social media, to the effect that they still didn’t have full knowledge of the vaccine have worsened the uncertainty over its safety. A well-organised and detailed information campaign about the drug will go a long way in allaying fears over the safety of the vaccine. This should include the public vaccination of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his two deputies Constantino Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi. Government’s messaging deficit has long been its Achilles heel and could severely hamper its efforts to curb the pandemic. Its pathetic messaging and double standards have not only been limited to the Sinopharm vaccine. Doesn't it raise eyebrows that while government is preaching the need to limit movement of people and public gatherings, the ruling Zanu PF party continues to hold face-to-face meetings? The glaring double standards were also laid bare when First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa ignored her husband’s order to avoid public gatherings by organising a cooking contest in Chinhoyi in blatant defiance of the national lockdown regulations. That this was held a day after government warned citizens to brace for more restrictions in light of the highly fatal and fast-spreading South African variant, not only exhibits absence of leadership, but is also an insult to the country’s citizens. With such deplorable messaging, the government can forget about successfully curbing the COVID-19 pandemic.
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
[Premium Times] On Friday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Africa located in Brazzaville, Congo, said over one million COVID-19 cases had been confirmed on the continent.
The number as of 18:40 South African Standard Time (SAST) was 20 628 042 cases, with 748 126 deaths recorded and 13 526 629 recoveries.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country, Ms Atieno, who lives in Nyalenda slums in Kisumu County, could easily access her antiretroviral therapy drugs (ARVs).
She is among hundreds of people living with HIV who are avoiding visiting local health facilities to collect their drugs for fear of contracting Covid-19.
Ms Jane Oriedo, a resident of Nyalenda, confirms that there are HIV patients in the slum who fear visiting health facilities.
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, 33,000 HIV patients in 61 facilities in Kisumu were supplied with ARVs to last them months.
To mitigate the decline in patients visiting facilities, the National Network of People Living with HIV has started an initiative to distribute the ARVs to those who cannot access them in public facilities.
Uganda’s president on Monday expressed his frustration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), saying they are not gods and should be modest as they set out guidelines to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Museveni, who was addressing the country on the latest government efforts to deal with the coronavirus pandemic specifically took issue with WHO’s protocols on the tally of confirmed cases in Uganda.
“While I am not like Trump who is fighting the World Health Organisation, I think it should be modest. We cannot be responsible for people that got infected from another country,” Museveni said.
Museveni in May this year directed the country’s health ministry to deduct from the country’s tally, all positive tests from neighbouring countries. WHO on the other hand insists that such cases should be recorded and treated in the territory or country where they are detected.
“Following a Presidential Directive of deducting all foreign truck drivers from Uganda’s case count,” the ministry said at the time.
Uganda has sent back at least 167 nationals of neighbouring countries who tested positive in Uganda, and Museveni advised WHO to interest itself in Africa’s cultural context where hosts have a right to welcome or reject visitors.
By the time the president addressed the nation, Uganda had 774 confirmed cases, of which Museveni pointed out that nearly half (373) are truck drivers transporting good across the East African region.
The president also congratulated Ugandans and specifically the doctors on working tirelessly to keep the Covid-19 losses at a minimum. The country has not recorded any coronavirus deaths and registered 631 recoveries.
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South Africa will ease the Covid-19 lockdown from level four to level three beginning from June 1, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Sunday amid a surge in confirmed cases.
Level three will allow the opening of the economy and the removal of a number of restrictions on the movement of people, while significantly expanding and intensifying the public health interventions, said Ramaphosa.
President Ramaphosa said the decision was based on wide consultations with various stakeholders across the country and guided by advice from the World Health Organisation and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even as the country moves to alert level three, it is important that South Africans should be aware that there are a few parts of the country where the disease is concentrated and infections continue to rise, the president said.
By Sunday, South Africa has recorded 22,583 confirmed Covid-19 cases, up by 1,240 from Saturday, the highest daily surge since March 5 when the country reported its first case.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has temporarily suspended trials of hydroxychloroquine from its global study into experimental Covid-19 treatments, saying that its experts need to review all available evidence to date.
The UN health agency in March launched a multinational trial on a variety of repurposed drugs to kick-start the search for a treatment for Covid-19.
Speaking on Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that in light of a paper published last week in the Lancet that showed people taking hydroxychloroquine were at a higher risk of death and heart problems, there would be “a temporary pause” on the hydroxychloroquine arm of its global clinical trial.
He said the concern related only to the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for Covid-19, adding that the drugs are accepted treatments for people with malaria and auto-immune diseases.
The US National Institutes of Health is also running a clinical trial to establish whether the drug, administered with the antibiotic azithromycin, can prevent hospital admissions and death from Covid-19.
[Premium Times] UN Chief says the world must unite to make coronavirus vaccines available to everyone, everywhere.
