People spending more time to get Covid vaccine shots

City dwellers converge at Kisenyi Health Centre IV Covid-19 vaccination center in Kampala to get inoculated on January 24, 2022. Officials at the facility said they receive at least 700 people daily. PHOTO/ TONNY ABET

What you need to know:

  • Around November last year when mobile vaccination centres were fully functional across Kampala, vaccine recipients reported that they were taking about 30 minutes to get vaccinated.

Mr James Wamuzeeni,  who works in a supermarket in Kampala, did not expect the frustration of waiting for more than five hours for his second Covid-19 shot.
Around November last year when mobile vaccination centres were fully functional across Kampala, vaccine recipients reported that they were taking about 30 minutes to get vaccinated.

But Mr Wamuzeeni, who run away from City Hall clinic vaccination centre to Kisenyi Health Centre IV, expecting to find the process faster was still in the queue at 12:30pm yesterday.  
“I reported to City Hall Clinic at 8am because I wanted to take my second dose early and go back to work but there were too many people there. So I came here [at Kisenyi] but I am facing what I have been through at City Hall,” he said.
By noon yesterday, the health facility had about 600 people waiting for vaccination with only one nurse administering the jabs.
Ms Rashida Kaweesi, who had also come for her second dose, said she was helpless.

“There is a lot of disorganisation. Only one person is administering vaccines. Government should increase the number of workers here,” she said.
The supervisor of the vaccination exercise declined to comment, citing heavy workload. 
But a lower official at the vaccination centre, who preferred anonymity, said they receive at least 700 people daily who need  vaccines.
Difficulty to access vaccines is also coming at a time when some government agencies and other employers are either planning or have started implementing Covid vaccination mandates where the unvaccinated are barred from accessing services or working.  

Dr Daniel Kyabayinze, the national Covid-19 vaccination coordinator, said the government will address the problems in access to vaccination.
He said a total of 13 million out of 34.5 million doses of vaccines that the country has so far acquired, have not yet been used.
“It is good that people are coming [for vaccination] voluntarily because we had taken a break so that we finish polio vaccination and then we start the mass vaccination. So if the hospitals are overwhelmed, then we start the mass vaccination again,” he said.

Dr Kyabayinze had earlier told this newspaper that they would not put much focus on mass vaccination in Kampala because 80 percent of the targeted people in the capital are vaccinated.
Efforts to reach the director of public health at Kampala Capital City Authority on why mobile vaccination centres in the city were closed were futile as he did not answer our calls.

But at Old Taxi Park in Kampala, there was one mobile vaccination in operation. The officials said they started operating last Saturday and will end on February 4.
The centre’s supervisor said they vaccinated about 400 people on Saturday and were expecting to vaccinate around 1,000 people yesterday.