Sixteen people have so far died from Covid-19 in Masindi since the first and second waves of the pandemic broke out in Uganda, reveals the District Health Officer (DHO).
Presenting the status of Covid-19 in the district during the District Covid-19 Taskforce meeting yesterday (Monday), Mr Patrick Baguma disclosed that of the 16 patients who succumbed to the viral disease, 13 were in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) while three others were under home based care.
He added that the district currently has 2,626 cumulative suspected Covid-19 cases in both waves; 3,065 samples have so far been collected; 139 cumulative positive cases were under home based care with 136 being discharged from home based care while two health workers are currently in ICU.
Last week, Masindi district received 760 doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the National Medical Stores compared to 4,630 received in the first phase. These, according to Mr Baguma, are too few a doses for the population that had the first jab.
“We expected to get a similar number of vaccine doses matching with first phase. This is because the second jab will attract the same number of people for immunisation yet the vaccines will not be enough. There will be a stock out in a few days because the delivered vaccines are few,” said Mr Baguma.
The DHO said people eligible to receive the second Covid-19 jab are those who had the first one. However, priority will be given to frontline health workers, Mr Baguma said.
Number of ICU beds in Uganda
A research titled “Assessment of the current capacity of Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Uganda; a descriptive study by Patience Atumanya, Agnes Wabule, Lameck Ssemogerere Cornelius Sendagire, Arthur Kwizera, John Mukisa and Peter Agaba reveals that Uganda has 55 functional intensive care beds in the 12 operational ICUs.
Conducted in 2019 and the results released in January, the report indicated that 14 ICUs in Uganda, 12 are operational while two are non-functional due lack of human resource. Only a quarter of the 12 are in public hospitals.
An additional 20 did not have ventilatory capacity. Most of the ICUs are anaesthesiologist-led, run a closed model and have variable nurse-patient ratios.
