Uganda Receives 700,000 doses of Sinovac Vaccine

The government of Uganda has Tuesday afternoon received a second batch of 700,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccines from the Chinese government.

The vaccines were received by the Minister of State for Primary Health Care, Margaret Muhanga who revealed that these will supplement the previously deployed Sinovac vaccines to support the ongoing mass COVID-19 vaccination programme.

Muhanga said that government will first release 300,000 doses of the newly received consignment to mainly target teachers who are supposed to receive the second dose while the remaining 400,000 doses will be split into two to act as 1st and 2nd dose.

She added, that government is committed to increasing access to vaccines in order to protect the population from this deadly disease.

To-date, Government of Uganda has received 6,631,763 doses of various COVID-19 vaccines.

So far 2,575,021 doses have been administered while 3,021,994 are currently being distributed countrywide.

“Of the administered doses, 1,974,045 have been administered as 1st dose and 600,976 have been administered as 2nd dose,” Muhanga said.

The Chinese ambassador to Uganda Zhang Lizhong said that the donation is demonstration of 59 years of good bilateral relations between the two countries.

“During the recent 13th BRICS Summit and the first meeting on the international forum on Covid- 19 vaccine cooperation, H.E President Xi Jinping stressed that China is committed to building a global community of health for all, that is providing vaccines to the world particularly fellow developing countries,” Lizhong said.

The ambassador revealed that China will provide a total of two billion doses of vaccines to the world.

Dr Alfred Driwale, the Assistant Commissioner, Vaccines and Immunization (UNEP) said the country is set to receive an additional 400,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines on Tuesday evening to add to the 196,800 doses received recently.

Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the Ministry of Health spokesperson said, “Tomorrow, more 808,800 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from COVAX and France at 22:20hrs.”