Kagadi district has confirmed the first case of COVID-19, according to the Chairperson Kagadi District COVID-19 Taskforce cum Resident District Commissioner, Ms Lillian Ruteraho.
Ms Ruteraho told our stringer on Thursday that the 40-year-old case is an employee of Shengeli Engineering Construction Company upgrading the Kabwoya – Kagadi –Kyenjojo Road from gravel to bitumen standard.
The RDC said that the patient who hails from Jinja district has been residing in Mabaale Town, Kagadi District.
By publication time, plans were underway for the patient to be transferred to Hoima Regional Referral Hospital for specialised medical management.
“The man was working with Shengeli Construction Company. They arrived here on July 13 and we tested them before starting work. The man is 40 years old and came from Jinja. Plans are underway to be taken to Hoima and police surrounded the place where he was residing because he was staying together with others to work in the stone quarry. We are also testing his contacts but out of the 25 we tested, it was only him who tested positive for Covid-19.”
Ms Ruteraho urges the community to report to the relevant authorities any suspected cases of COVID-19 for intervention. She called for calm as the authorities manage the situation.
“Let people not panic because we are working on the matter. Kagadi is neither the first nor the last in recording a COVID-19 case. But we are managing the situation.”
However, when contacted, Shengeli Engineering Construction Company Public Relations Officer, Mr Godwin Tashobya, disowned the patient saying the employee works with Madcuss Company that Shengeli Construction Company sub-contracted to work on rocks for the construction of the road.
He added that the patient and his colleagues was residing around Kitoro cell in Kagadi town council but they had not yet started blasting the rocks.
“The company is called Madcuss that was sub-contracted to do stone beating. Those workers came last week and the district taskforce came and picked samples from them. They have been at home waiting for the results and they had not resumed work. When the employees arrive here, we call the district health team that takes their samples as they are confined in one house. When the results are out and the employees are found non-reactive, we give them the equipment and start working,” Mr Tashobya said.
“The samples spent four days. We told the workers to stay in the house they were renting until the results were out but they had not yet begun working. These were to begin working at Kiryane section,” he added.
The Kagadi COVID-19 case is among the eight new cases confirmed out of 2,405 samples that were tested on July 15, 2020.
This brings to 1,051 the number of COVID-19 cases so far confirmed in Uganda.
However, no death is yet to be recorded.
