Cabinet Pushes Vaccination of School-going Children to Holidays

Cabinet sat on Monday, June 20, and pushed the vaccination of children aged 12-17 years to holidays.

Earlier the Ministry of Health had scheduled the vaccination to take place in May and June but this was stalled following disagreements between the Ministries of Health and Education.

The Health Ministry intended to carry out the vaccination at school premises during the running academic term.

However, this faced resistance from some school administrators and parents since the vaccination needed consent from the guardians.

Speaking to the press at the Uganda Media Center, ICT minister Chris Baryomunsi said the cabinet approved the campaign to vaccinate children between 12-17 years with Pfizer vaccine.

He said it was agreed that the school children be vaccinated during holidays but with the consent of their parents.

The development follows a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases since the last week of May 2022.

The average number of cases has increased from 20 per week between January and May 2022 to over 600 cases per week in the month of June.

According to Baryomunsi, the positivity rate has increased from less than 1% to the current 3.5% which may mark the beginning of the fourth wave.

He said the upsurge is driven by the Omicron variant that was responsible for the third wave.

To date, government has administered 21,634,800 vaccines doses, and of these, 16,136,413 (71%) is first dose, 5,417,599 as 2nd dose and 80,788 as booster doses.

“It is important to note that 65 districts are below 50% coverage for full vaccination after two rounds of campaigns,” he said.

Baryomunsi noted that vaccines are at risk of expiry if not used urgently.

So far, 2.5 million doses have expired and an additional 6,123,408 doses are at risk of expiry by September 2022.

This is why the cabinet has agreed to renew the efforts of mobilizing Ugandans to go for COVID-19 vaccination and observe SOPS.