While delivering his National Budget Reading speech, President Yoweri Museveni revealed that some of the confirmed persons announced to have COVID-19 were actually negative. He directed the Ministry of Health to come out and clarify on the matter.
Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the Minister for Health has said that the Makerere testing scandal was an isolated error that has been resolved. She said the altered results were for only nine individuals.
“It does not affect the rest of our testing centres. The nine cases have since been discounted by our number. This brings the total number of our COVID-19 cases in Uganda to 685,” Dr Aceng said today during her nation address.
According to Aceng, ever since Uganda started testing, a total of 148,960 samples of COVID-19 have been run. She revealed that Initially, COVID-19 testing was done only at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) but due to the growing need for testing, a strategy to decentralize testing was developed.
“Nine laboratories met the required standards to complement the UVRI testing. COVID-19 testing has been decentralized to Adjumani General Hospital, Tororo General Hospital, and Mutukula point of entry to test at the border points,” she disclosed.