Africa-Press – Uganda. At least 50 Members of Parliament and staff have tested positive for Coronavirus, the Director of Communication and Public Affairs, Chris Obore has confirmed.
“About 50 Members of Parliament and staff who participated in the EAC Legislative Assemblies’ sports in Arusha have tested positive for Covid-19. They are being managed by the Ministry of Health and Parliament Health team. No hospitalization case registered. The majority who went to Arusha are safe,” Mr Obore tweeted Tuesday.
He explained that since the games were interactive in nature, the players could not strictly observe the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
The cases were detected at the entry of Parliament in Kampala.
Asked about the number of people that left the country to participate in the East African Community (EAC) Inter-Parliamentary games, Obore’s assistant, Grace Gidudu could not readily avail the number.
She noted that all legislators and staff tested for the virus in the conference hall of Parliament on Monday as a routine process that neither targeted the legislators nor staff that traveled to Arusha.
The East African Community (EAC) Inter-Parliamentary Games started on December 4, 2021, and ended on December 17, 2021.
The national parliaments of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, and the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) competed in eight sports disciplines that including football, netball, volleyball, tug of war, golf, basketball, and darts. Uganda’s parliament emerged the overall best in athletics, with two gold medals. The lady’s team also won gold.
Uganda also won silver in football.
The development comes barely two days after the State Minister for Primary Healthcare, Ms Margaret Muhanga confirmed official data showing a dramatic rise in infections, driven primarily by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The test positivity rate, a key metric, jumped from 0.6 percent two weeks ago to 5.9 percent on December 18. On December 4, 34 out of 5,301 samples tested came back positive. On December 17, 357 out of 6,497 tested positive.
“I want to warn you that Covid-19 is still with us. By last week, the numbers have started creeping up again. As we speak today, we are testing 200 people positive daily in the last four to five days. By the time we reach Christmas when you all take off your masks, you meet your family members, take pictures with the older people, kindly help us get them vaccinated first before you get to the village,” Ms Muhanga said.
The Director of General of Health Services, Dr Henry Mwebesa, in a December 17 statement said they have detected 18 new cases of the omicron variant from incoming travellers from Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria between November 28 and 29.
About 129,676 Ugandans have been infected by the virus since the pandemic was confirmed in March last year, and 3,274 have died from it, according to official data.
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