By Ignatius Bahizi – East Africa Editor, The African Gazette The forty-two days lockdown in Uganda has ended but the impact it has had on the economy and the general livelihoods of the citizens might take a long time to be reversed. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the country will not be put into another lockdown sooner or later, especially since the reasons for lifting it points more to economic than the de-escalation of the pandemic.
The President calling off the lockdown
While announcing the suspension of the lockdown on Friday, President Museveni said that there has been a consistent drop in positivity rates from 22 percent at the time the lockdown was instituted to 8% at present. He also said that the daily hospital admissions of the severe and critically ill patients had significantly dropped as well. He however announced that the drop in the daily number of deaths remained slow due to the late presentation to the hospital.
The three options analysis
It has to be borne in mind that the opening up relies heavily on the projections made by the national planning authority based on three options that might influence the escalation or de-escalation of infections.
The option of fully opening-up or zero lockdown is projected to cause the shoot-up of new infections to a weekly average of 2000, and this would automatically push the country into the more dangerous third wave.
The second option is a continuation of a full lockdown which would reduce the infections to a weekly average of 246. Although this would be the best option, the President noted that it would have severe economic consequences and social well-being of the citizens.
To avoid the economic effects, the government has settled for the third option, partial opening-up to allow the economic sector to operate.
Even if this option is projected to increase the number of cases in the first week as people get out of the lockdown and are eager to get back into normal working conditions, which will lead to high movement of people causing a slight spike, the projection is that this would eventually reduce, as people settle into their work with strict observance of standard operating procedures.
Effects of the government chosen option for lockdown
The government has chosen the option that takes care of the economy. This was done post the association (that brings together traders in Kampala city) appealed to parliament to compel the government to find an alternative to the total lockdown because of their businesses collapsing. They tabled concerns like bank loans, which they invested in their businesses and that needed to be repaid with the attached high-interest rates, even when they have been out of business for that long tenure.
It is not only the big businesses that were affected, every aspect of livelihoods was under lock and key for the 42 days apart from food markets and shops selling foodstuffs. Operators of food markets also complained that the prices had drastically gone down because the purchasing power of their customers had reduced.
According to the 17th Uganda Economic update by the World Bank, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the country’s economy has recorded its slowest growth in three decades. Many firms closed, jobs were lost and household income fell to the lowest level. Further damage that has been done to the economy by the 42 days lockdown has not yet been tabulated. However, gauging from assessment following the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, the projected economic picture must be very grim.
Of course, this is not Uganda’s problem alone. Globally the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled economic development, but developing countries like Uganda and her African peers have all been hard hit and many of them have run to international financial institutions for relief loans which further hampers their future growth as they have to contend with many years of paying them back.
The Covid-19 Situation in Uganda: Some data
Uganda was at first credited internationally for managing to control the spread of the pandemic when it first reached in the country, and by the end of the first wave the number of infections was slightly above forty thousand and the number of deaths was about two hundred. Actually by March this year, there were less than 20 people admitted in hospitals. The cause of the spike from May is not yet very clear.
The latest figures published by the Ministry of Health indicate that over 50% of new infections have happened in the last two months alone. To date, cumulative cases stand at 93, 927 with recoveries standing at 83, 115 and deaths at 2,690.
The country’s target to vaccinate twenty-two million people before fully opening up seems untenable. As of today, only 1,139,260 people have been vaccinated country-wide, and out of that figure, only 233, 950 people have received the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Most of the vaccines that have already been administered are donations from foreign governments and the President announced that other donations will be coming into the country in this month of August. His new directive is to include vaccines for all children between the ages of 12-18 who must be vaccinated before re-opening schools that have been closed for more than a year now.
Apparently, scientists have confirmed that children who were not considered for the anti-COVID vaccination before can now be vaccinated using the Pfizer vaccine and President Museveni has directed the Ministry of health to consider this age group in their planning for vaccination.
Kenya leads its fellow East African states with the highest infection rates at 201, 954 followed by Uganda (93.927), Rwanda (67.557), South Sudan (11.056), Burundi (7.268), 56), and Tanzania (1.017) according to the World Health Organization. However, the world health body reveals that many countries do not know the exact figures of their infection rates because they do not carry out sufficient tests.
Ignatius Bahizi – Currently East Africa Editor of The African Gazette, he is a journalist of repute and an analyst of geopolitics and security of the Great lakes region of Africa. Ignatius has worked in the region for over ten years with different local and international media houses.
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