The Uganda Prisons Service has written to the ministry of Health asking to have all prisoners and staff in all the prisons across the country tested for COVID-19.
The request comes after 153 prisoners in Amuru prison tested positive for COVID-9 last week.
While addressing the media in Kampala, the prisons spokesperson Frank Baine, revealed that another prison warder has tested positive.
“One of the proposals we have made is for the ministry of Health to test all the prisoners and staff and we have 61,867 inmates together with 12,060 staff, “he said.
He however said although the prisons have started registering some of these Covid-19 cases, people under their custody are safe.
“We are managing them in accordance with what it requires to ensure that our people survive Covid-19. It is true since March up to June prisons have been safe from Covid-19 simply because we were able to establish isolation centres,”he said.
He said the reason why the cases of Covid-19 in isolation is increasing because the prisons system is at the tail of the justice system.
“As long as police continues to pick people from the community and they don’t test them, we can’t avoid that. So when they pick these suspects before they take them to court, they should be tested first,”he said.
He said the best method at the moment is to test whoever enters prison as one way to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.
