The Ministry of Health has said the COVID-19 vaccination campaign will be officially launched on Tuesday this week.
Dr. Atem Riak Anyoun, Director General for Primary Healthcare, MoH, South Sudan | 4th April, 2021 | Courtesy Photo
Addressing journalists during the regular media COVID-19 briefing on Sunday, Dr. Atem Riak Anyoun, Director General for Primary Healthcare at the National Health Ministry who also oversees the vaccine deployment across the country confirmed that all plans have been concluded and vaccination is expected to kick off in four centers of Juba County.
The first phase of the vaccination campaign targets healthcare workers.
“The vaccination is going to kick off on Tuesday. This is the latest information we have. Tuesday the launch will be done as well as the vaccination. We have four centers at J1 (State House), Juba Teaching Hospital, Giada Military Hospital and a center at the Buluk Police Hospital. Our first target are the healthcare workers. As you have seen from the report, they are at higher risk than the rest of the population. So they will be the first to be targeted in the vaccination,” Dr. Atem Riak told reporters.
Dr. Riak Atem says vaccinators have been trained to carry out the exercise which targets over 95,000 people across the country. Between 80 to 100 people will be vaccinated in each of the centers in Juba County daily.
Dr. Atem said, “The day we received the vaccines on the 25th March, 2021, we were already training the would-be vaccinators because this is a new vaccine and we want them to be trained properly. All these days, we have been refreshing and updating them ready for their work. We also want to reach the states because as you have seen, nearly all the states now have cases. So we want to reach the states. Usually, to do a vaccination, you need to do a micro plan, you collect information about your target population. For Juba County, we are done that’s why we are starting here.”
He dismissed claims that the government halted the vaccination due to funding shortage clarifying that at the moment, the government has all the resources for the first phase of the vaccination exercise.
South Sudan received 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX facility on Thursday, 25th March 2021.
It also received another over 59,000 doses from African Union, Africa CDC and MTN on Monday, 29th March 2021 bringing the total vaccine in the country to over 190,000.
The World Health Organisation has recommended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine because it considers that the benefits outweigh its risks which include rare blood coagulation disorders in persons who had received the vaccine.
The AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccines | Courtesy Photo
The AstraZeneca vaccine is administered in two doses with a recommended inter dose interval of 12 weeks or more after the first dose
The AstraZeneca/Oxford product is a viral vectored vaccine called ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]. It is being produced at several manufacturing sites as well as in the Republic of India and Korea. ChAdOx1-S has been found to have 63.09% efficacy and is suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements according to the WHO.
As of Sunday evening, South Sudan has 10,281 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 9,835 recoveries and 113 fatalities according to official figures from the ministry of health.
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