The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Uganda has restricted travelling to nine more countries that have been hit by COVID 19.
The affected countries are San Marino, Belgium, USA, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Austria and Malaysia.
According to the health ministry, these countries have reported large cumulative numbers of infected persons. Some have also reported a high number of new cases in the last 24 hours.
The new development comes after government over the weekend put travel restrictions on seven countries – Italy, Iran, South Korea, France, China, Germany and Spain. This brings the affected number of countries Uganda is monitoring to 16.
It is a pandemic
The new coronavirus outbreak can now be described as a pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization has announced.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was troubled by the spread and severity of the outbreak, along with a lack of action taken to combat it.
“WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we’re deeply concerned, both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he told a news conference in Geneva.
“We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic.”
Aceng on Uganda’s position
Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the minister of health says that travel to the nine countries has been restricted because they pose a threat to Uganda. So far, Uganda has not reported any cases of COVID 19 and the minister says that government is determined to make sure that no cases are reported.
Travellers from the restricted countries who insist on travelling to Uganda will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day health self-quarantine that will be met at their own expense. Travellers who refuse to carry out self-quarantine will be asked to leave the country.
“Uganda has no travel ban as has been reported by some people. We are not stopping anyone from coming to Uganda but people in restricted countries need to know that they will be followed up. We have out the guidelines of self-quarantine on our website and those who are travelling should come prepared with an idea of what they will go through,” Dr Aceng explained.
On March 9, 2020, Uganda refused 22 European delegates who had travelled to take in Uganda-EU Business forum from entering the country after they refused to self-isolate themselves.
So far, 1,623 travellers have been followed by the health ministry and asked for self-quarantine since COVID 19 was declared in China in December 2019. Of these 1,071 are Chinese, 244 are Ugandans, 443 are Italians and 34 are from South Korea.
‘Uganda justified’
The World Health Organization country representative, Dr Yonas Woldermariam says that Uganda is justified in putting travel restrictions. So far, more than 90 countries globally have put restrictions on travel from affected countries.
According to WHO, some of the reasons that restrictions were put included; limited capacity to respond to a mass outbreak in their countries, the disease is hard to control, the disease is a public health emergency of international concern and public anxiety. Others put restrictions due to the economic impact an outbreak would have on their economy.
Globally over 118,000 infections have been reported with over 4,000 deaths. In Africa, 11 countries have reported cases. These include; Egypt, Algeria, Algeria, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, Cameroon, Togo, Burkina Faso and the DRC.
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Self-quarantine? Isn’t that giving travelers too much trust and too much responsibility over our public health and national security? What if someone agrees and then gets tired or does their own thing after agreeing to self-quarantine? Shouldn’t traveling just be stopped altogether if government doesn’t have the capacity to keep people in quarantine? This thing is very serious and cannot be taken lightly like this.
Imagine, the other honourable in parliament was sent away when he told the house that he was not screened at all when he traveled back from South Korea… they should have taken his warning of our unpreparedness more seriously and introduced stricter measures and monitoring structures.
This is the time to invest in seriousness, we should not wait for this thing to reach Uganda.
Seriousness is required, please government.