Uganda’s cumulative Covid-19 recoveries have surpassed the number of total confirmed cases.
The Ministry of Health announced 4 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday, pushing the total confirmed cases in the country to 1,069 while the cumulative recoveries, according to the ministry, stand at 1,071.
The announcement, in simple terms would mean that more people have recovered from the virus than those who have tested positive for Covid-19 in Uganda and such a discrepancy has attracted a number of questions.
Speaking about the same issue in a statement, Dr. Henry Mwebesa, the Director General Health Services at the Ministry of Health, said that this should however not be a cause for alarm because they are aware and working on reconciling the figures.
Dr. Mwebesa said that it arrives from the numbers of foreigners from neighboring countries who are admitted in Ugandan hospitals and added on the number of recoveries although the same are not added on the country’s confirmed cases.
“The cumulative recoveries includes Ugandans, non-Ugandans and refugees to date but the cumulative confirmed cases are of Ugandans (only) to date,” Dr Mwebesa said.
Dr. Mwebesa said last month that, “The foreigners were admitted into care as we prepare for their repatriation, and once settled into the facility, they chose to complete their treatment in Uganda as opposed to repatriation to their respective countries.”
President Museveni had earlier on instructed the Ministry of Health to deny entry to all truck drivers who test positive for Covid-19 at the border points but according to Health Minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, truck drivers who test positive from Elegu border point are not sent back immediately but rather admitted due to the long distance and expenses of transporting a positive patient back to the exit points.
Dr Aceng, told journalists that, “It would be expensive because the ambulance driver transporting a positive Covid-19 patient to the border from Elegu will have to put on a full PPE, the PPE is plastic and hot and it will make it difficult to traverse the whole country putting it on,”
“We keep the patients from Elegu and in Arua border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in our systems until its safe to transport them back. Others are handed over to their countries immediately,” Aceng added.
Last month, Dr. Aceng hinted that the national Covid-19 task forces of all different East African countries were to try and find a lasting solution to such cases.
Her ministry is yet to provide an update on whether this solution was reached and no one from the Ministry was available to speak to us by the time of compiling this report.
Uganda currently has a total of 141 patients on admission in different referral hospitals across the country. 121 of these are Ugandan nationals, 19 are foreigners while 2 are refugees.
The country has so far conducted a total of 247,646 sample tests and with no confirmed deaths from the Coronavirus to date.
