The Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have confirmed the closure of over 90 vaccination centres due to a biting acute vaccine shortage.
“All our over 90 vaccination centres are closed now because there are no vaccines. [It is] not that we have vaccinated everyone but we have run out of vaccines so that is a situation that ideally should not happen,” the World Health Organization Consultant Epidemiologist, Wamala Joseph, told the media last week.
He said the vaccination should continue until they meet the target of 10 per cent of the country’s population by December 30, 2021, to bring about herd immunity.
“So until we get there, the country will remain at risk of future upsurge and transmission waves,” says Joseph.
South Sudan received its 132,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this year in March, however, it gave back 72, 000 doses to the COVAX facility in April.
Lurking dangers
Dr. Joseph added that the country was at risk of importing more COVID-19 cases of the new variant from neighbouring countries in case the borders are not restricted
“We already having the Delta variant which is currently the most transmissible variant. It is responsible for many of the transmissible surges in the neighbouring countries.”
WHO also urged the government of South Sudan to put strict measures at the borders to prevent escalation in the number of imported cases.
“This, therefore, requires us as a country to strengthen our measures at the points of entry to ensure that we enforce the SOPs at the points of entry. The current SOPs require that as people cross the border, they need to have a valid covid-19 negative certificate, and if they don’t have one, then they should be subjected to checks,” he said.
Joseph advised that the country should improve on its surveillance at the border points and also to improve the testing capacity in the country to be able to know whether there is a surge or not.
Doctor John Rumunu, the Director-General of preventive health services and the acting Covid-19 incident manager confirmed that at the moment the country has all three variants.
“We have three different variants in the country, we have Alfa, Lambda and Delta variants and one variant of interest,” he said.
He said the prevention of COVID-19 various remains a responsibility of all citizens in the country.
“We advise people to really adhere to measures which are confirmed to reduce transmission of COVID-19 that is keeping the physical distance of at least 2 meters, wearing of masks, frequent hand washing and avoid crowded places.”
Dr. John also raised concern that those infected were not cooperating with the health workers.
“This is not acceptable we want to admonish our people who are making use of the private or public labs. When you are tested positive please cooperate with the case management team to list your contacts so that they are also followed up.”