The Minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng has revealed that Uganda is currently experiencing another horrible surge in the daily cases of COVID-19 infections.

“We have started experiencing an increase in the daily number of COVID-19 cases compared to the stable trends we observed since January 2022,” says Aceng.

She says the increase is similar to the rise the country faced in June 2021 when the Delta variant was prevalent.

At the time, delta variant, rapidly spread and drove hospitalizations. More than 1000 Covid-19 patients were in hospitals then and over 3,000 others managed from home due to limited hospital space.

This prompted President Yoweri Museveni to announce a lockdown on June 18.

But according to Aceng, Uganda is well prepared to respond and save lives than before.

“We have no indication for travel restrictions, or lockdown in the current circumstances. We will optimize the existing control and mitigation tools at personal and community levels,” she said on Sunday.

The Minister explained that some of the measures include vaccination for all individuals, wearing of face masks at all times especially for the vulnerable population and, hand washing.

Asked whether a lockdown is one of the things government is considering at the moment, Aceng said: “No. There is no plan for lockdown. We will continue to optimize the current prevention and control measures such as adherence to SOPs like wearing off face masks and hygiene and vaccination against COVID-19.”

The Ministry of Health no longer provides daily updates for new Covid19 cases but according to figures by the World Health Organization, in Uganda, from 3 January 2020 to 3 June 2022, a total of 164,366 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 3,602 deaths, were reported. As of 21 May 2022, a total of 21,044,430 vaccine doses had been administered.