South Sudan to begin using Johnson and Johnson vaccines this week

By Tapeng Michael Ohure

South Sudan’s national Ministry of Health says it will begin to administer the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) single shot COVID 19  vaccine from the   8^th  of  October this week.

“The ministry of health and partners have been planning for its deployment, we now have a tentative date for beginning J&J vaccination on 8 October,” said  Dr. John Rumunu, the  Acting Covid-19 Incident Manager at the Ministry of Health  told journalists in Juba on Sunday,

Dr. Rumunu added that the Ministry of Health has administered 91 percent of the 59,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines it recently received, bringing the total number of South Sudanese who have received the double jab COVID Vaccine to 108685 so far since the start of the vaccinations in April this year.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) vaccination is generally low in Africa citing the need to vaccinate 70% of each country’s population by September 2022.

“We have actually seen that the phase of vaccination in Africa is currently low, so for us to attain this safety target, the phase of vaccination must arise to over 7 times to around 150 million doses in a month to meet the target that has been set by the global COVID-19 summit,”said  Dr. Wamala Joseph, the WHO Health Emergency Preparedness Officer for South Sudan.

South Sudan recorded 14 Covid-19 positive cases on Saturday,  bringing the cumulative total confirmed cases to 12,035, with 11,617 recoveries and 130 deaths.