Popular Ugandan Medical Doctor on Twitter, Dr Paul Kasenene, a specialist in Nutrition, Lifestyle and Functional Medicine has explained the recent low numbers of new COVID-19 infections in Uganda.
According to Dr Kasenene, Uganda might have developed herd immunity. Herd immunity is when a large part of the population of an area is immune to a specific disease. If enough people are resistant to the cause of a disease, such as a virus or bacteria, it has nowhere to go.
And Kasenene says that because most people countrywide didn’t follow SOPs (wearing masks, social distancing etc), there was likely mass infection leading to consequent reduction of spread.
Kasenene was responding to a tweet made by NTV reporter Sudhir Byaruhanga who asked whether Covid19 is vanishing from Uganda as he claimed that Mulago Hospital has only five patients, Entebbe grade B has no patients; private hospitals which were admitting people all don’t have COVID-19 patients.
“Even if there is no mass testing, people would still get sick and come to hospital. The doctors have failed to explain this,” said Byaruhanga.
To date, Uganda has 40,408 confirmed cases of COVID-19 after 13 new cases were reported yesterday. 15,049 have recovered from the virus while 334 have succumbed to the pandemic.
The Health ministry will tomorrow on Friday, March 5, 2021 receive the first batch of 864,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID 19 vaccine. Vaccination will start on March 10.
The ministry says that the private sector will be allowed to bring in vaccines but this will be after the ministry has been able to cover a certain percentage of the vulnerable population to limit exploitation.