Covid-19: Guidelines not strictly followed

Entebbe General Referral Hospital is one of the three isolation centres in Uganda. The other is Mulago National Referral Hospital and Naguru Hospital. A turn to the left from the Express Highway brings you to Entebbe Police Station where two police officers are seated on a bench with a visible white hand sanitiser bottle between them. A hundred metres away is the hospital gate. It is about 2:46pm and the time for visiting patients is over. While others linger around the gate, a lady who looked to be a staff member, enters while talking on phone. She entered the hospital without using the sanitiser about five metres away from the gate.

A few measures
A walk to the out patient department welcomes one to a large hall with an enquiry counter on the left and a history taking desk ahead on the right. There is a hand sanitiser at the triage area. Three medics are taking medical history and temperature of patients.

They sanitise the thermometer after taking my temperature, a common medical practice. In many cases, they do not sanitise their hands before handling the next patient.
The coronavirus alert messages are not visible at the gate, causality notice board or administration office.
In the corridors and waiting areas, patients freely chat about the long wait to see a doctor. About five of the patients Daily Monitor talked to said they did not sanitise. At the parking lot, two women and a man joke about not greeting each other because they did not want to contract coronavirus.

One of the administrators at the hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says they have an isolation ward for suspected cases and they have been receiving people who fly from high risk countries and send their samples for testing at the Uganda Virus Research Institute. According to the source, the tests take about six hours before those who test negative are sent home for a mandatory 14 days self-quarantine.

“These people come here walking and looking healthy. We test them and send them home for self-isolation. We only monitor them through phone calls. We cannot keep them here. We will be overwhelmed, ” he said.
Efforts to reach the hospital director for a comment on their preparedness were futile. The administration told Daily Monitor that he was out for a meeting at State House on, among other issues, coronavirus and repeated calls to his known cell phone yesterday went unanswered.

Mr Bill Oketch returned from the Netherlands on Sunday together with about 10 other colleagues. He is at his home in Lira District complying with the self-quarantine requirement imposed by the Ministry of Health.
“At home, I stay alone. My wife works in another district and when I was returning, I informed her that I would be undergoing self-quarantine. I am continuing to do office work from home,” said Mr Oketch.
Mr Oketch says after screening at the airport, he was told by the handlers at immigration office that he would be issued with a certificate to show that he is virus-free, after completing the quarantine period without presenting any signs and symptoms.

According to the ministry guidelines: “This is a transparent self -restriction of persons’ activities when they are not ill with COVID-19 for the purpose of protecting unexposed members of the communities from contracting the disease should any at risk traveller become sick. This is particularly important for persons who may have been in contact with a person who has symptoms of COVID-19 or is suffering from the disease or has travelled from one of the areas with high transmission of COVID-19”
The exceptions for when one can mix with others is: “They will be required to interact with surveillance officers in appropriate personal protective equipment who may come to carry out a medical check-up on them.”
According to another 29-year-old traveller from Netherlands who declined to be named, as a father of two, distancing himself from his children has been impossible. He returned from Netherlands on Sunday evening, rode on a bus to his home in Gulu District.

“If you are telling me to go home and isolate myself, my children will come saying ‘daddy welcome back’. What do I do? I cannot send them away when they come jumping on me with joy. Government should have hired a hotel for us then tell us it is at our own cost,” he narrates.
According to a source, most people are abusing the self-quarantine requirement because it is self-will and there is no alternative for those who cannot afford isolation places separate from their families.
The incubation period for COVID-19 in human blood is 14 days before it shows signs and symptoms.

When someone coughs or sneezes they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease.
There are now 147 confirmed cases in Africa in 15 countries, and there have been four COVID-19-related deaths.
WHO maintains that “containment remains the most appropriate strategy for African countries. Apart from South Africa and Algeria – which have clusters of transmission linked to imported cases – the confirmed COVID-19 cases in the African region are sporadic importations from European countries, mainly Italy, France, Germany and Spain.”

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