By Aminah Nabuule
The Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni has summoned an emergency meeting to discuss the reopening of medical schools.
The meeting due Wednesday, August 4 at State House comes after President Museveni directed the Ministry of Education, National Council for Higher Education, and Ministry of Health to meet and plan for the possibility of reopening for medical students only.
According to Ismail Mulindwa, the Director of Basic and Secondary Education, the Minister will, after, notify the public about the outcomes from the meeting.
Addressing the nation on after the second lockdown on Friday, Museveni directed that schools remain closed for another sixty days.
According to State Minister for Primary Education, Dr. Moriku Kaducu, schools will not reopen unless all teachers and university students take the Covid-19 jab and the disease’s positivity rate reduces to 5 percent.
“At a moment, the positivity rate is at 8.4 percent and if we risk and reopen schools now, the positivity rates will go up. We cannot do this now. The scientists will of course guide us in reopening schools and this will depend on the positivity rates.”
According to the Ministry of Education, there are 258,866 students at all private and government universities in the country.
On Saturday, July 31, 2020, Uganda received a donation of 286,080 doses of AstraZeneca from the Government of Norway and 300,000 of the Sinovac vaccine from the People’s Republic of China.
Minister of Health, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng said, “This supplements the initial 1,139,200 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that Uganda received in March and June 2021.”
According to her, the Government’s strategy is mass vaccination of the eligible population (22 million representing 49.8%) as a means of optimal control of the pandemic and full opening up of the economy.
However, to date, Uganda has only vaccinated 902,992 people with the first dose while 240,771 have been able to receive their second dose.
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