Uganda has Wednesday 10th registered 8 new cases of coronavirus bringing the total number of infections in the country to 665.
The Ministry of Health says that the new cases were confirmed from 2423 samples tested on Tuesday June 9.
Dr. Henry Mwebesa, the Director General Services at the Healthy Ministry says four of the cases were among the 1,388 samples tested from points of entry while four were among 1,035 of alerts and contacts.
Three of the confirmed cases, he says are truck drivers who arrived from South Sudan via Elegu point of entry while the other arrived from Tanzania via Mutukula.
“Four of the 8 are contacts and alerts to previously confirmed cases,” he notes, adding that infections include two from Kyotera, Kayunga (1) and Amuru (1) districts.
“All cases are Ugandans. The total number of cases in Uganda are now 665,” he adds in a statement on Wednesday June 10.
Additionally, he says, thirty 31 foreign truck drivers (16 Kenyans, 8 Tanzanians, 5 Eritreans, 1 Burundian and one South Sudan) who tested positive for coronavirus were handed over to their respective countries of origin.
Meanwhile, Kitgum District has run out of coronavirus sample collection kits.
This comes just a few days after the District health officials collected swab samples from over 50 contacts of a 34-year-old resident of Pandwong division who tested positive for COVID-19.
William Komakech, the Kitgum Resident District Commissioner also the district COVID-19 task-force chairperson says 21 sample collection kits that were delivered from Gulu Regional Referral Hospital over the weekend are used up.
The district had by last week run out of the collection kits but received emergency supplies from Gulu to extract swab samples from high risks contacts of the positive patient.
Komakech says lack of the kits greatly affects services of the surveillance team that are on the ground tracing contacts the positive patient that need immediate testing to ascertain their health status.
“As I speak now, the COVID-19 sample collecting kits we got from Gulu Regional Referral Hospital is finished; we don’t have any left in store,” Komakech said.
He says several contacts that are still being traced by health officials may not be tested timely as they lack sample collection kits to extract swab samples.
According to Komakech, health team has already written to the Health Ministry requesting for 60 sample collecting kits to enable the task-force team to effectively collect samples from all contacts and suspects they are tracing.
