Covid-19: Now is not time to lower guard
Covid-19 continues to ravage the world but the number of newly recorded cases overnight- in Uganda have significantly dropped. PHOTO/COURTESY/REUTERS.
What you need to know:
- The issue: Covid-19.
- Our view: Uganda is slowly but surely flattening the Covid-19 curve. It has been a year of cancelled events, economic challenges and stress. But now is not the time to become complacent about the progress.
- As has been the case world over, second waves have been registered, sometimes even deadlier than the first.
A search on worldometers.info, a digital media company that publishes world statistics, will show you that the new cases of Covid-19 in Uganda are going down.
From reaching more than 700 new cases a day sometime in December 2020, we have been registering less than 50 cases a day this week, with only eight cases being registered on Tuesday, February 16.
Whereas Health minister Jane Ruth Aceng attributes the decline to the normal trend of a pandemic, Dr Nathan Onyaci, the director of Masaka Hospital, says people could have developed natural immunity to coronavirus.
Experts offer varying explanations for the decline in Covid-19 cases.
Uganda reached the peak of the pandemic between November 2020 and early January 2021 and this “represented the close of the first wave of the pandemic,” according to Dr Aceng.
Uganda is slowly but surely flattening the Covid-19 curve. It has been a year of cancelled events, economic challenges and stress. But now is not the time to become complacent about the progress. As has been the case world over, second waves have been registered, sometimes even deadlier than the first.
Europe witnesses a second wave that saw total lockdowns return in some countries, including Germany, the UK and Netherlands.
The US in its second wave towards the end of 2020 witness a dramatic increase of Covid-19 cases, with about 300,000 new cases and more than 4,000 deaths recorded daily.
South Africa was recently ravaged by a second wave caused by a more contagious variant that led to more severe cases, stretching the healthcare system to the limit.
Most of these second waves emerged after the countries thought the worst was behind them. Ugandans are already celebrating that Covid-19 cases have dramatically gone down despite the prediction by scientists that cases would go up after last month’s elections.
The country is also preparing for learners to go back to school as government eases even more Covid-19 restrictions.
This is on the heels of the news that Uganda will be importing Covid-19 vaccines, and there is a likelihood that we could get a local vaccine with the later undergoing clinical trials.
We are finally beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. But despite the achievements in reducing the number of new Covid-19 cases, now is not the time to lower guard.
Let us continue social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks.
