The Ministry of Health has halted the exercise of testing Covid-19 in Kampala due to the escalating numbers of people entering into the capital.
Last month the ministry embarked on mass testing for Covid-19 in Kampala and according to the ministry’s spokesperson, Emmanuel Ainebyoona the exercise started in parts that have crowds of people such as arcades, markets and taxi parks.
However, according to the Acting Commissioner Health, Promotion, Education and Communication from Ministry of Health Dr Richard Kabanda the exercise has been stopped because they can’t continue due to a lot of people coming into Kampala every day.
“When you look at Kampala, it’s an area with a lot of people, we had aimed at making sure that whoever is in this area is tested but we have realised that it will be very impossible because Kampala hosts a lot of people every day and every hour, that means if we test people in Kampala, we need as well to test whoever enters Kampala, therefore because of that, we have decided to first halt the exercise as we see the next step,” he said.
Since Kampala is a place that hosts a lot of people, Dr Kabanda said that even those who get tested need to be retested after two weeks whoever it has become difficult because those who tested first would be out of Kampala and tracing for their whereabouts is very difficult at this moment.
“People must know that if you test first you need to retest after 14 days but the problem we have got is that when people test negative, they will not come for retesting and even forget to take into practice the Covid-19 SOPs, this is why Kampala is becoming a big problem now,” he added.
Covid-19 is still a big threat in Uganda and currently there are over 4291 people who tested positive, while 1998 have recovered and 49 deaths.
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