COVID-19 Updates

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Eight contacts of the Kenyan truck driver who tested positive to COVID-19 are being quarantined at Paboo Secondary School classrooms in Amuru district. The suspects have been padlocked at the facility gazetted as an isolation centre to control them from escaping. Paboo SS is …

  Johannesburg, South Africa | THE INDEPENDENT | AGeoPoll survey on Sub-Saharan Africa shows that there is concern that many nations on the continent are poorly prepared for a pandemic as easily transmissible as COVID-19.  Many are frightened about coronavirus spreading in their countries, others about its economic impact, especially …

Kiev, Ukraine | AFP |  The headquarters of Dmytro Voloshyn’s startup in the historic centre of Kiev is eerily quiet. But online, his business is busier than ever. Despite a crippling global economic crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, Voloshyn believes a worldwide lockdown to slow infections was just what …

Paris, France | AFP |  As the coronavirus pandemic bears down on vulnerable nations in Africa and South Asia, experts say there are only weeks to help fill chronic shortages of what medics need to help people breathe. Not ventilators, but oxygen itself. Medical oxygen is a core component of the …

Beijing, China | AFP | After Wuhan was sealed off from the world, acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang started an online diary about the coronavirus tragedy unfolding in her hometown. Her journal drew tens of millions of readers — but now that it is about to be published abroad in several …

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT | Julius Businge  |  DStv and GOtv customers who have fully paid up on their subscription will automatically get upgraded to the next higher package at no extra cost, the company said on April 20. Offers took effect on April 20 and will stand until COVID-19 …

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT | Julius Businge  | The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has donated 5, 000 coronavirus testing kits, reagents and accessories worth Shs381million to the Ministry of Health, it said on April 21. Officials said that part of this money (Shs60million) has been contributed voluntarily by individual …

Frankfurt am Main, Germany | AFP |  Fears that cash-rich corporate raiders could use the coronavirus crisis to swoop on weakened European firms were perhaps best exemplified by Donald Trump’s alleged bid for a German biotech firm working on a vaccine. The outrage that followed has spurred fresh action by European …

Kampala, Uganda |  THE INDEPENDENT |  A Ugandan who passed away in Dubai and whose body was repatriated into the country was an accident and not COVID-19 victim , Ministry of Health has clarified. The Director-General of Health Services Dr Henry Mwebesa says that the person whose body was repatriated from …

Washington, United States | AFP | A malaria drug widely touted as a potential cure for COVID-19 showed no benefit against the disease over standard care — and was in fact associated with more deaths, the biggest study of its kind showed Tuesday. The US government funded analysis of how American …