COVID-19: nearly 2000 people vaccinated

By Simon Deng

The Ministry of Health revealed on Friday that nearly 2,000 people have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccines since April 6^th when the campaign started in Juba.

“We are approaching 2,000 people vaccinated, the vaccination exercise is going on very well,” Atem Riak, Director General for Primary Health Care told The Juba Echo.

The COVID jabs are being received by frontline health care workers and elderly people above the age of 60. In addition, people with health complications like pressure, asthma and diabetes are also eligible for the vaccines.

“We are also making plans for the vaccination, we are in the process of training people who will go and conduct vaccination in the 10 states. We are also mobilizing resources to cover implementation, once all these issues are in order the vaccine will reach the states,” said Riak.

Richard Lako, Incident Manager for COVID-19, said that the health ministry has so far made some progress in curbing the spread of Coronavirus, adding that the public needs to continue adhering to preventive health measures.

“The reason we imposed lockdown is that we do not want the situation to worsen, now we managed with some efforts to bring it down. It is now the public to ensure they observe the preventive health measures,” said Lako.

Lako added the preventive health measures need to be observed to avoid exacerbating the situation.

“If they want to go back to that messy situation then it will be them facing the same consequence,” he disclosed.

On March 25th, Juba received 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility.

South Sudan is expected to receive a total of 732,000 doses of vaccines from the COVAX facility within the first six months of 2021.

The ministry of health has since Thursday confirmed 16 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the cumulative number to 10,432 cases and 114 deaths.