Government optimistic About managing COVID-19 Pandemic amid increasing cases.
Written by Derrick Asaba on August 10, 2021
The National Planning Authority (NPA) has revealed that even with an increase in COVID-19 projected cases in the next two months, the pandemic will be manageable.
This is as revealed by the NPA Executive Director, Joseph Muvawala as he released the weekly COVID-19 case projections to the press.
“Even if the projected cases of 242 is used as a basis and the cases triple in the next 2 months, with the current capacity of 3,818 beds and the 169 ICUs in the country, the pandemic can still be manageable,” he noted.
Notably, there are a total of 97 Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and 391 High Dependence Units (HDUs) in government facilities and a combined 72 ICU/HDU beds in private hospitals.
This implies that in total, there are 169 ICU beds in the country of which 117 ICU beds are currently available and also an allowance to accommodate an additional 581 beds if resources permit.
According to the NPA bi-weekly model projections, there will be an increase in the weekly average cases from 1,419 in the week of 8th-14th August to 1,692 in the week of 15th-21th August 2021.
This slight increase is due to the increased movements following the easing of the lockdown measures according to Abraham Muwanguzi, the manager Science Planning Department at NPA.
“As you know there is an incubation period of two weeks and that’s why in these first weeks of easing the lockdown we are not seeing any increase but it shows up in the third week,” Muwanguzi said.
He further revealed that the reported new cases over the past two weeks have generally steadied at a daily average of 240 cases ranging between 71 and 393 cases.
The rate of hospitalization and admission to ICUs is also going down, having reached its peak in the month of June as revealed by Muwanguzi.
Data from the Ministry of Health shows that as of August 4, there were 581 COVID-19 patients in hospitals with 95% of the patients in government hospitals. This has thus revealed a 97% fall in the rate of hospitalization since the start of the second wave.
“The number of people going to hospitals is reducing and also the severe and critical cases which need ICU have tremendously decreased from around 112 cases in June to less than 60 cases currently,” Muwanguzi revealed.
Muwanguzi urged the public to continue observing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) even though there is optimism of capacity to handle increasing COVID-19 cases.
