Government has introduced a mandatory shs. 240,500 fees for Covid-19 testing services across the country, the Ministry of Health has announced.

The fees will serve as a cost recovery mechanism that will enable the Ministry of Health to acquire more test kits for continued access to testing services in the country.

The health ministry’s Permanent Secretary Dr. Diana Atwine said in a statement that the charge will however be incurred by a certain group of individuals and companies.

Dr. Atwine said, “The Ministry continues to receive requests from organisations to have their staff tested, which makes it difficult to sustain due to inadequate in-country stock of test kits, resource constraints and the high cost of Covid-19 testing,”

The fees will come into effect on September 1, 2020 and according to Dr. Atwine, truck drivers, individuals seeking to know their Covid-19 status, organisations (both government and private), Ugandans returning from abroad and visitors arriving into the country are some of the individuals that will have to pay the testing fees.

Dr. Atwine noted that Government will continue testing for free, patients who present Covid-19 symptoms, contacts of confirmed cases, community surveys, health workers and surveillance samples.

To date, the Ministry of Health has carried out at least 350,000 sample testing and recording over 2700 confirmed cases of Covid-19 ever sinve the first cases in March this year.