Revise Covid-19 response strategy 

Last week, the Cabinet approved a proposal by the Ministry of Health that will give permission to public places like health centres and malls to shut out the unvaccinated from accessing their premises. The reasoning behind keeping the unvaccinated away from the vaccinated to protect the latter would have made sense at the start of the pandemic. 
At the time, little was known about several aspects of the disease like how it is transmitted, and the different treatment options. As it is now, a lot of studies have been done. This research has yielded a lot of contrary findings to what was presumed and should be aiding the Covid-19 response strategy for many countries. 

It is appalling, therefore, that countries like Uganda are not utilising this evidence-based research in preference for outdated approaches. Outdated in this case is the knowledge we based on to make the decisions we made when the pandemic struck about two years ago. It is unfortunate that many national Covid-19 task forces in different countries are not taking advantage of this information to guide effective response in combatting the pandemic.
 
For example, it was initially thought that vaccination builds appreciable immunity against contracting and transmitting Covid-19. New evidence, however, suggests otherwise. According to a study done by Singanayagam etal and published in the Lancet in October 2021, both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated can contract and transmit Covid-19 in measures that do not differ that much from each other. This means that the presumption that the unvaccinated will infect the vaccinated is just a worry that has no solid scientific basis as the virus can move either way. 
Current findings also show that vaccination only builds up a very temporary immunity against the virus and this too quickly wanes in a few short months. This evidence implies that booster doses are needed every six months. In line with this evidence, countries like Israel are already administering their 4th vaccine, or their second round of booster shots. Uganda has also followed suit and is administering its first booster dose.

Studies showing that the vaccinated and the unvaccinated can contract and spread the Covid virus imply that proposals like those by the Ministry of Health to cut off the unvaccinated from accessing public spaces are not informed by science. Current research shows that even if it is the just vaccinated accessing public spaces, they can still infect each other. The recent Omicron variant sweeping across the globe has more than proved this. A country like Israel which has a vaccination coverage of more than 95 per cent has a hospitalisation rate at 80-90 per cent for Omicron. This clearly shows that the unvaccinated are not the problem.

Surprisingly, our national Covid-19 response  team seem to be ignorant about such research findings. This festive season, enforcement teams in several districts in Uganda devised inhuman condescending methods to deal with the unvaccinated. Together with law enforcement agencies , they waylaid travellers at district borders and either forced the unvaccinated to vaccinate, or demanded that they disembark and end their journeys at these checkpoints. Aside from this being gross abuse of basic human rights, why are authorities not taking advantage of new findings in their approach? 

At one of the popular weekly town hall meetings  that were providing alternative solutions to dealing with the Covid-9 pandemic, Alice Alaso intimated about a situation she found in her upcountry village when she visited recently. Authorities were moving from house to house demanding that all locals go for vaccination. The Secretary General of Allied National Transformation related how she found her aunt unwillingly going for vaccination after being threatened by local authorities. 

The aunt had requested to be given time to consult her doctor since she had an underlying illness that required for her to have guidance from her doctor as to the most appropriate vaccine for her. The authorities were, however, having none of her explanations. The aunt had, therefore, decided to hurriedly go for vaccination minus consulting her doctor because she was being threatened. 
This kind of abusive approach is not only backward and thoughtless, it should be fought and resisted by all the relevant authorities. Authorities should establish and appropriately respond to reasons as to why there is hesitancy to vaccination without resorting to militaristic outdated approaches to scale down the pandemic.

            [email protected]