Museveni orders lockdown in latest coronavirus measures

President Museveni has banned all movements in the country including for private cars his latest measures to combat the spread of coronavirus.

"We have prohibited people to people movement including people using private cars, Tuk tuk and boda bodas,”Museveni said while addressing the nation on Monday evening.

He said the new directive will take 14 days.

Museveni said he had introduced the new directives because of the indiscipline of Ugandans who didn’t fully follow the earlier guidelines seeing the spread of the virus but also as a proactive measure.

He cited an example of the ban on public transport means which saw private vehicle owners take passengers pretending to be relatives and overcharge them for their own benefit.

““Some private car owners have turned them into taxis transporting two people and we assume they are family members yet in fact they are not. For example, some one charges shs50,000 for people travelling from Kampala to Jinja,”Museveni said.

He said the ban on movement of private transport means starts at 10pm tonight

“I would have given public time to adjust but it would be a wrong policy because it would give time to people to move to villages and transfer sickness to villages.”

The president said he was moved to take the harsh but safer guidelines to ensure the country is on the safer side.

“After further analysis we have realised that to be on the safer side, we rather make mistakes on side of cautiousness than wait to be like some countries where over 1000 die per day of this disease.”

Museveni added, “There is less risk in taking this bitter medicine of restrictions than gambling by assuming the population was not contaminated when we are not sure.”

Museveni also banned gatherings of more than five people.

Starting March 31, the president said there will be a curfew after 7pm everyday across the entire country apart from movement of cargo but he said this exemption does not apply to boda bodas, bicycles and tricycles.

He said that food markets in Kampala and other towns should not close but will have to adhere to several measures by the Ministry of Health.

“There should be distance of four metres to the front to the left, to the right and to the rear ─ between seller and buyer and also seller. The seller must not go home during the 14 days.”

He ordered that garages, saloons, lodges and other non-food shops  to close immediately for a period of 14 days.

Uganda currently has 33 coronavirus cases after three more were confirmed on Sunday night and now joins a host of other countries that enforced tough measures to combat coronavirus.

Rwanda, South Africa have effected lock-downs whereas Zimbabwe is expected to do the same next week.

Governments all over the world are enforcing harsh but strict measures  so as to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic that has had a toll on economies since its outbreak late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Currently, all over the world, there are 753,385 with 36,277 whereas 158783 have recovered from the deadly pandemic.

The US with 146,027 is leading whereas in Africa, there are over 4600 confirmed cases in 46 countries, 146 deaths and 335 recoveries.

On the continent, South Africa at 1,250 has the highest number of confirmed cases whereas in Eastern Africa including the Horn of Africa, Mauritius 102, Rwanda, 60, Kenya, 38 and Uganda at   33 are leading.

Burundi and South Sudan are currently coronavirus free.