Bombers vaccinated

Safety Jab: Olympic-bound Bombers; Ssemujju (L), Nanziri (C) and captain Shadir got their vaccination jabs yesterday in Lugogo.  PHOTOS/JB SSENKUBUGE

What you need to know:

  • The AstraZeneca vaccine, codenamed AZD1222, is a viral vector vaccine for prevention of Covid-19

The government through the Ministry of Health (MoH) began meeting its promise of vaccinating Team Uganda against the coronavirus ahead of the Tokyo Olympics yesterday.

At the start of the 100-day countdown to the quadrennial Games about a fortnight ago, the government through the National Council of Sports (NCS) made the commitment to offer the AstraZeneca vaccine to athletes and officials.

And following a bureaucratic process that involved paperwork from Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) to NCS, to the Ministry of Education and Sports and finally MoH, the process took off.

“Vaccination has been cleared,” NCS general secretary Dr Patrick Ogwel said yesterday. AstraZeneca vaccination involves an individual taking two jabs in a space of eight weeks.

“We are looking at this period of April to take the first shots,” stated Ogwel. Uganda has so far 23 athletes who have qualified for the Games.
And the first batch comprising the trio of boxers; welterweight Musa Shadir, middleweight David Semujju and flyweight Catherine Nanziri and some officials took jabs yesterday.

Several options
But this paper understands that some athletes have taken vaccination already and others may take from elsewhere, such as US-based rower Kathleen Noble.

“In principle, all athletes are going to be vaccinated. We don’t need them all here,” noted UOC’s general secretary Beatrice Ayikoru.
Since qualifiers to Tokyo are not yet done, UOC and NCS are not yet certain of the entire Tokyo-bound contingent but Ogwel says they are going to vaccinate with a selected group.

“Team Uganda is not yet fully known, that is officials, and coaches. It will be determined when we finish qualifiers … What we are doing now (vaccination) is a general list which we are dealing with,” he added.

About the vaccine

The Astrazeneca Vaccine. The AstraZeneca vaccine, codenamed AZD1222, is a viral vector vaccine for prevention of Covid-19. It was developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca it is given by intramuscular injection, using as a vector the modified chimpanzee adenovirus ChAdOx1. The efficacy of the vaccine is 76.0% at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 beginning at 22 days following the first dose and 81.3% after the second dose.