Inside Uganda’s strategy to end Covid

The Health ministry’s Ministerial Scientific Advisory Committee on Covid-19 has issued the government with a four-point strategy to ease the Covid-19 restrictions.

 The three-page report signed by Mr Misaki Wayengera, the committee’s chairperson, a copy of which the Monitor has seen, argued that the country has not attained the basic minimum vaccination coverage to guarantee a full return to normalcy.

 “The emergence of new sub-variants of the stealth (Covid-19) Omicron variants which are more transmissible and more evasive of vaccine-induced immunity, presents a dilemma for a country such as Uganda which has not yet attained the basic minimum coverage for the primary series,” the report reads in part.

 The scientists proposed that the government should undertake an up-to-date serosurvey to evaluate the extent of natural exposure to SARS-COV2, especially in face of the emergence of more transmissible but mild sub-variants of omicron.

 “Such data can inform the alternative hypothesis of considering hybrid immunity as a basis for easing the restriction measures, the same could mathematically be used to examine the levels of pre-existing herd immunity, and gauge the current gaps for vaccination,” the report states.

 They tasked the government to ramp up the vaccination coverage of primary series among persons aged 12 and above to attain 75 percent coverage and adopt a policy that restricts the requirement for vaccine boosters to only the elderly and those with comorbidities.

 “This is required to comply with and scientifically justify the easing of restriction measures as per WHO prescriptions. This would ease the pressure of economic burden presented by the requirement for continued boosters on all the population, which cannot be sustained,” the report states.

 It added: “The younger people with no comorbidities can be primed to accept boosting by natural exposure since they carry less risk for severe outcomes.”

 According to the scientists, the ministry’s ability to detect, refer and effectively treat those who acquire the disease, must be planned.

  This newspaper understands that the Health ministry recently embarked on a deliberate move to gradually increase its vaccination coverage as a key biomedical intervention planned to couple with the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions.

 However, the country’s Covid-19 vaccination coverage is said to be stagnant at 39 percent and there has also not been any recent serosurvey to suggest that the increased transmissibility of the omicron sub-variants has driven increased natural exposure beyond what was earlier reported, on average 20 percent.

 As such, the committee says Uganda’s population can still be considered to be under-vaccinated against Covid-19 to warrant the lifting of public health restrictions, as per WHO prescriptions.

 WHO recommends that a country should have attained a minimal 75 percent vaccination coverage to be able to lift the Covid-19 public health restrictions.

Yesterday, Mr Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the Health ministry’s spokesperson, said while some of the recommendations were already in force, the ministry was waiting for an engagement with the committee before all are adopted.

 “We are emphasizing and calling upon these age groups the committee refers to, to come for vaccination, we are also setting to carry out a survey over the same,” Mr Ainebyoona said. He added: “Most of those recommendations are in force, so we shall look at them and we will adopt some of them but I guess we will wait for a ministerial meeting with the strategic committee.”

 Due to initial vaccine discrimination and inequity and disregard, many developing nations in sub-Saharan Africa have barely attained the basic minimum of the WHO set coverage of Covid-19 vaccination as in the primary series.

 However, the committee says the strategy they recommended is envisaged as a scientific basis for the return to normalcy in anticipation of WHO’s 2023 planned downgrading of Covid-19 as a public health emergency of international concern.

Uganda is one of those countries that must scientifically craft its home-grown policy for ending its unsustainable national Covid-19 response activities, the committee said.