Health Ministry agrees to close Covid-19 quarantine center at Namboole stadium

The Ministry of Health together with the committee of experts on Covid-19 that was formed by President Yoweri Museveni have agreed to close the covid-19 quarantine center at Namboole stadium.

In the meeting held on Tuesday, both parties agreed that its high time they handed over the stadium to the authority to start using it for its official duties since the number of covid-19 patients is gradually decreasing.

On 08th September last year the Ministry of Health team led by the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine and the Director General Health Services, Dr. Henry G. Mwebesa officially received Namboole Stadium as an auxiliary treatment center for asymptomatic and mild COVID-19 cases.

At the time of handover, a total of 210 beds had been fixed at the treatment facility. During the handover ceremony, Dr. Atwine informed that the capacity of the facility will be subsequently enhanced to 1,500 beds.

According to Dr. Atwine, the move to have Namboole stadium as a treatment center for COVID-19 patients was meant to free up space in the hospitals that were overwhelmed by numbers of the confirmed cases.

“We do not want to turn all the hospitals into COVID-19 treatment centers. We learnt lessons from other countries that started admitting COVID-19 patients everywhere and spilled over to other patients hence affecting the service delivery of other cases” Dr. Atwine said last year in September.

The Namboole treatment facility was rehabilitated with support from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) at a tune of Shs400M.

Meanwhile, in the same meeting, it was agreed that teachers are also going to be vaccinated. According to the State Minister of Health for General Duties Robinah Nabanja, vaccinations of teachers were supposed to start on 16th but the experts were still vaccinating health workers for the past five years.

“We have enough vaccine to vaccinate even the teachers. The vaccines are fake as most people are saying we just want to encourage Ugandans to embrace this exercise they need to trust us.”