Dr. Joseph Muvawala the Executive Director, National Planing Authority (NPA) has warned of an increase in covid cases mid July this year due to human influence during the lock down. Graph showing actual curses projected cases of covid 19
While addressing press in Kampala, Dr. Muvawala said that after the development of a model in March 2020 that predicts covid infection cases every after 14 days which has been used ever since, it has proved to be 97% accurate and has shown that by July 10th 2020, cases will rise up to 7,214.
The model indicates a rise of new cases although lower than previous week averaging to atleast 1,037 new cases per day.
According to Dr. Muvawala, internal factors such as effectivness of lock down measures, health capacity systems, population structure in terms of age and underlying conditions, population density, access to health services among others are the dominant contributors to the spread.
between 12th to June 19th, the model projection was 10144 cases while actual cases were 9926, less by 218 cases as projected by the model.
The studies by the model show that the lockdown measures put in place by the president on 6th June 2021 were not effective in terms of curbing the virus spread especially with the increased transmissibiliry of the new variants and decreased compliance with interventions.
The NPA advised increase on covid testing ,lockdown enforcement measures and increased public awareness aimed at behavioural change in local population.
The model was developed as a result of research collaboration between NPA and Pesnnsylvania state University aimed at determining causes of neonatal mortality in Uganda. The tools used for the model are based on the “Endemic Epidemic modelling” that can explain factors that affect spread of covid19 in Africa.
