The COVID-19 Audit Committee has started auditing the public and private institutions to gauge their adherence to the safety measures recently announced.

The team—which has been assigned by the National Taskforce on COVID-19— started its auditing on Thursday, February 18, in Juba, with the office of the Vice President Hussein Abdelbagi Akol.

COVID-19 Incident Manager Dr Richard Lako on Thursday said the committee would rate the institutions based on five main areas. The first one is on behaviours reducing the spread of the disease.

“Maintaining the health environment within the institution to make sure that the environment is conducive and also to maintain the health operation,” Lako said.

He said he expects institutions to be preemptive with the process of identifying the risk factors that may lead to the spread of the disease.

VPs office

 To this, he gave the assessment from the VP’s office.

“Looking on this, and after evaluating and making observations in the first are of promoting behaviour that reduces the spread of COVID-19, the maximum score is nine and the office has scored seven. Maintaining health environment the expected score is six and the office managed to the score six scores and maintaining health operation the expected score is 8 and the office managed to score 8 and the toilet is six and they managed to score six.”

He also rated the office on mitigating the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“So, the over roll scores that we expect when we base on the standard is 33 and the office of the Vice President made 30.”

In summation, the committee looks at whether the institution is of high, low or moderate risk when it comes to handling COVID-19 measures.

 “The high risk is zero to 11 scores, moderate is 12 to 22 and 23 to 33 is low risk. So looking at this the office has scored 30 and this falls between 23 and 33. So this place we have seen it has a low risk of transmission,” he said.

The Secretary of COVID-19 Audit Committee Anthony Garang stated that there are penalties that include summoning the accounting officer of that institution before the National Taskforce to be questioned over negligence of COVID-19 prevention measures.

“There are penalties that can amount to suspension of the operational license that means the closure of businesses for a particular time,” he explained

They could be a ban on individuals entering business premises without facemasks, or observing other crucial measures.  Passengers are also to be scanned in the public transport before boarding vehicles.