Akol claimed that despite his travels to these high-risk countries, he had gone through Entebbe without being screened, which cast doubt on Uganda’s preparedness to deal with the pandemic. Bainomugisha, however, said unknown to many travellers, they are all screened from a distance by thermal scanners stationed at various terminals at the airport.
“We have what we call thermal scanners. Someone operating it is a distance, they are picking temperatures at a distance so as you walk through, it will capture your temperatures and someone at a certain point is actually checking your body temperature,” said Bainomugisha.
Adding that, “If your body temperature is raised, it will actually single you out of the crowd, and we put you aside and appropriate measures are taken.”
He explained that because the three thermal scanners at the airport have the capacity to pick a person’s temperatures within a range of 20 meters, there are high chances that the legislator didn’t notice.
“I must say that the nature of the machines that we have for scanning, they are at a distance, they scan between 5 to 20 meters. As you walk you may not actually realize that you have been screened, your body temperatures have been taken. So you can’t know if indeed this person…he must have gotten the screening, scanning the body temperatures. Other than that I wouldn’t want to comment on his allegations. That assurance is there because the airport has thermal scanners. One at the main arrival area, one at the VIP terminal and one at the VVIP terminal that is used by presidents. So everyone that goes through the airport is actually scanned.” Bainomugisha added.
Atek Kagirita, the Incident Commander for coronavirus at ministry of Health says they have received reports of some individuals avoiding Entebbe airport and are using other borders, especially Busia and Malaba. He says they have alerted all their teams in border towns to ensure all people who enter are screened.
“We are intensifying surveillance. In this, we do screening, we check for possible patients in facilities and we are also receiving reports and continue to encourage the public to report anyone with flu-like symptoms and people are actually reporting,” says Kagirita.
Adding that; “Surveillance means that we should be able to ensure that these people who come outside Uganda are isolating. If you see somebody who just recently came from outside Uganda and is just moving around, call us immediately. Because we want to ensure that they are quarantined so that we don’t get any cases when we are not expecting them.”
According to Kagirita, the cost of managing coronavirus is so high that the best option now is to prevent the disease from spreading further.
“All the borders now, Entebbe airport, Busia, Malaba, Elegu, Mpondwe, Chanika are all doing stringent surveillance. People who travel from those countries we listed 17 countries in Category 1 and agreed to come to Uganda, they undergo mandatory self-quarantine for 14 days. If they don’t, then we use security now to manage them. We appeal to every Ugandan whether you’re in the village, in town, you’re a big man or a small person please fight coronavirus by adhering to the dos and donts of fighting coronavirus. Prevention is the best option for us. Even if corona comes to Uganda. lets us say corona is in Kampala still we must do prevention.” he said.
According to statistics by the ministry of Health, Uganda has recorded a cumulative total of 1,632 high-risk travelers since surveillance commenced late January. The statistics show that a total of 1,071 are Chinese nationals (about 76%) while 244 are Ugandans.
43 are Italians, 34 South Koreans and 240 constitute other nationals. At least 606 of them have since completed a mandatory 14-days-quarantine and 986 still under follow-up up while 26 suspected persons who tested since 29/01/2020 for COVID-19 were negative.
URN has established that government has recalled a total of 85 Chinese nationals who arrived in the country on Tuesday in Kampala for institutional quarantining. Most of them have been put in Chinese hotels where they are to be monitored for 14 days.
Kagirita says the Chinese ambassador to Uganda has explained that they came in a bigger number because there was only one flight from China to Uganda. He, however, says among all nationals, they are the most disciplined regarding adhering to the safety measures prescribed.
“The Chinese are doing well. I don’t want us to dwell much on them. By the way, I think 76% of my high-risk travelers are Chinese and from the time we started monitoring them in early February, they have been doing perfectly well on self-quarantining. So I have no problem with them,” Kagirita says.
He adds that; “the only problem is that on Tuesday (March 10, 2020) a number of them came at once. And that was explained by HE the ambassador when we met with the honorable minister. Because there is only one plane that can go to China now, once in a week and all of them came at ago. So they came many and we were concerned but we put some mitigation measures to really ensure that they don’t come in big numbers.”
The ministry is currently engaging both physical and phone follow-ups for high-risk travelers who have entered Uganda since the outbreak.
“We have physical follow up of category 1 high-risk travellers, and then we have phone followup for category two high-risk travellers. Physical followup means that the address that you give us at the airport and you must give us a contact phone in Uganda and we test and validate that that phone is on. Whether it is a hotel whether your relative, whether your own phone as a resident, we check it. If you say you’re going to Kireka block A house this, you don’t leave that house for the next 14 days. Our teams go there, map and then keep on checking every day to see how you’re doing.” says Kagirita.
Kagirita says the ministry is also discussing the tracking of phones of the high-risk travelers to ensure they monitor their movements and ensure effective quarantine.
“We are looking forward to engaging some technology to see that their phones are tagged. And if you move a small distance outside that place where you are believed to be, then we receive alerts here at the ministry. So if you’re your house is this and we tag it, and you move outside that house, we shall be seeing the signal here,” says Kagirita.