By Angella Nantege
Uganda Prisons Service has restricted visits to prisons as a mechanism of curbing the spread of Covid-19 amongst prisoners and officers .
The authorities said only that are fully vaccinated shall be allowed to access prisons.
Prisons spokesperson Frank Baine says that for one to be allowed into prison they will have to have a vaccination card and should have tested for Covid-19 within the last 72 hours.
“Our prisons remain closed to the public until further notice. For now we can only allow special cases whereby those allowed must be double vaccinated and must have done a PR test within 72 hours. These may include advocates and those who may urgently need to visit,” Baine said.
He noted that prisons still have a challenge of congestion.
Baine said: “Our capacity in prisons is 20,000 but we are stagnant with 67,000 prisoners and due to the public holidays excitement the crime rate went a bit high.”
He said they have 12,753 staff members in 260 prison units. Of these, 2116 staff and 507 prisoners have recently tested positive for Covid-19. A total of 273 prisoners and 1946 staff, he said, are free of Covid-19.
Baine said they have lost four prisoners and three prisons staff to the pandemic in the last one and half years.
