President Yoweri Museveni has revealed that some of Uganda’s Covid-19 cases were confirmed positive by mistake.
While delivering his 2020 /2021 National Budget speech from State House Entebbe on Thursday , President Museveni said that some of the confirmed 679 persons announced to have covid-19 were actually negative.
Museveni stated that the errors were made during testing by careless laboratory attendants at Makerere University Hospital. He said that the Ministry of Health will clarify on the matter.
“Some of the 679 confirmed cases were classified as positive when they are not by a laboratory in Makerere because they were careless. A few people were working there and probably got tired,” said Museveni.
Over a month ago, the ministry of Health (MoH) approved the University Hospital’s lab to start conducting Covid-19 tests to relieve the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) part of its huge workload.
After approval of the lab, Vice Chancellor Prof Barnabas Nawangwe said the authorisation was “a great millstone for Makerere University” that would “give a chance to our researchers to get the tests themselves from the patients and research on how the virus affects different parts of the body.”
The university team was also involved in the community transmission survey. The tests they carried out on samples in Masindi detected a positive case unrelated to the then existing cases. But President Museveni’s revelation that the Makerere lab released wrong results has raised questions on the university’s capacity to carry on such a responsiblity.
Meanwhile, the President called upon Ugandans not to give up on the fight as he said the war against covid-19 can be won if everyone listens.
“We cannot go on begging people to live. It should not be Police to enforce this. If you want to be buried, there are teams in white to bury you,” Museveni said.
He further disclosed that Uganda might have already found the vaccine if it was not for its corrupt officials.
Uganda has so far registered a total of 161 Covid-19 recoveries with no death.
The Ministry of Health today confirmed 14 new Covid-19 cases taking the tally to 679.
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