Uganda has received 175,200 Covid-19 doses from the COVAX facility.
The third batch that arrived in the country on Wednesday, is a donation from the Embassy of France in Uganda to help in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
The vaccine arrived at Entebbe International Airport aboard the KLM flight slightly past 10:00 pm and was received by officials from the National Medical Stores (NMS) and those from the Ministry of health.
“They have been delivered to NMS stores where they will be sorted for onward distribution across the country,” Sheila Nduhukire the NMS spokesperson said.
On 10th March, Uganda rolled out the first phase of a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination.
The country received a second batch of 100,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 7 from the government of India as a donation, to add onto the initial acquisition of 864,000 doses through the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (Covax) facility on March 5.
Dr Aceng was the first to receive the jab. She said that because of the high demand of the vaccine worldwide, majority of Ugandans will have to wait longer to receive the jabs as more doses arrive in small batches.
The donation comes at a time when the country is running short of medical oxygen as it grapples with the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic.
Diana Atwine, permanent secretary at the ministry of health, said in an interview with the media on Monday that there was a high demand of oxygen due to the surge in numbers of Covid-19 patients in High Dependency Units and Intensive Care Units (ICU) across the country.
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