Uganda receives 3m doses of J&J vaccines from Germany

The Minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng Saturday received 3,050,400 doses of the J&J vaccine donated by the government of Germany through the COVAX facility under the dose sharing arrangement.

The Germany Ambassador to Uganda Matthias Schauer Botschafter, who handed over the vaccines indicated that an additional 2.4 million doses of the same vaccine would arrive on December 9, 2021.

"I'm extremely happy to be here this afternoon for the first Germany donation of vaccines to Uganda. Germany has been very active within the Covax facility with more than 2.2 billion EUROs we are the second largest donor to COVAX overall and in the course of planning as it stands now we will be donating 175 million doses to developing countries all over the world....I can only implore you to make good use of vaccination," he said.

According to him, Germany has about 70 percent of its population already vaccinated.

"And that's not just good enough because our numbers (of infections) are spiking considerably because of the 30 percent who are not vaccinated and are getting infected. Our government is now seriously considering legal obligation to get vaccinated if there are no medical reasons against this," he said.

Ms Aceng said the J&J vaccines which is the 17 consignment of vaccines received by Uganda so far, would be deployed in the hard-to-reach areas during the ongoing campaign of accelerated regional mass vaccination.

The J&J vaccines Uganda has received, Ms Aceng says will be used to cover first-dose clients who had previously not been vaccinated with any other vaccine.

To date, Uganda has received a total of 17,750,590 doses of the Covid-19 vaccines to support the mass Covid-19 vaccination exercise.

So far, 6,793,643 doses of vaccines have been administered across the country, according to the minister.

"The increase and shaping up of the Covid-19 vaccines pipeline is a step forward to enable us vaccinate many Ugandans and progressively this will help us minimize the spread of Covid-19 as we move towards opening up the economy. The ministry of health has planned mass Covid-19 campaigns across the country moving region by region and so far we have covered four regions (Teso, Lango, Kigezi and Acholi). The response has been good except in one of the regions (Acholi). We are scheduled to move to other regions such as Tooro, Bunyoro, West Nile and Ankole," she said.

Ms Aceng said they're targeting to vaccinate 22 million people, aged 18 and above as the country moves towrads reopening up in January.