Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have revealed plans to intensify the COVID-19 vaccination campaign between May 9 and 16, 2022.
The objective is to increase the number of people that have access to the COVID-19 vaccination in the country.
“We are targeting to reach about half a million people during this period, and the actual number we target is about 465,000 adults. These are people eligible to take the vaccines, “said Malick Gai, the information management officer at the World Health Organisation.
He made the statement during the weekly COVID-19 briefing in Juba yesterday.
The one week intensified COVID-19 vaccination optimisation will be conducted in 21 counties in five states across the country.
Gai said the response to the COVD-19 vaccine in the country has been positive and they hope the vaccine uptake will rise.
South Sudan has so far received 2.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine and has administered over 669,000 doses.
“The country has fully vaccinated people [with] about 32.6 per cent of the total number of vaccines that we have consumed,” Gai stressed.
“If you look at the total number of people in the target population that have been fully vaccinated, it is acutely 9.7 per cent but then the idea is to look at the total population of the country which is only about 4.4 per cent that has been fully vaccinated so far.”
According to Gai, about 97 per cent of the health care workers in the country are fully vaccinated describing it as a very “good milestone.”
The country has COVID-19 vaccination centres across the 10 states and the three administrative areas.
The Director-General for Preventive Health Services in the Ministry of Health, Dr. John Rumunu, said the country has 667 sites providing vaccination in the country and they had not received any complaints about those vaccination centres.
“I want to advise the public and citizens that the services are there and let them go and receive their doses,” he said.
The last year’s widespread floods in the country had affected about 33 counties in the eight states and about 70 health facilities were either cut off, submerged, or damaged, disrupting routine health service delivery.
“In some areas during flooding, we have always reported the numbers of some of the counties that are affected but ever since we established vaccination centres in all the 80 counties, we have not received any information that any of those counties have stopped vaccination,” Dr. Rumunu stressed.
The total number of tests performed to date has reached 383,730 and the confirmed cases are 17,479 and the follow-up cases are 3,827. The cumulative number of death cases is 138 and the cumulative number of revered cases is 13,514
“There are no severe cases at the IDU and critical cases and we have 165 contacts currently under follow up,” he said.
However, in last week’s follow up of COVID-19 cases, 77,61 cases have been reported from Central Equatoria State, 10 from Eastern Equatoria State, one from Western Bahr el Ghazal State, while Upper Nile State reported 1 Ruweng Administrative Area reported four cases. The rest of the states and the administrative areas have not reported any positive cases.
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