Parliament has scaled down the number of its staff and journalists to 20 per cent due to surging cases of Covid-19.
Currently, Uganda has 67,215 cumulative cases with 542 confirmed deaths.
Chris Obore, the Parliament Director of Communications and Public Affairs says this is intended to comply with President Yoweri Museveni’s directive on public gatherings.
“Visitors are highly discouraged,” Obore said in a statement on Thursday.
He also revealed that recently, Covid-19 tests were carried out at Parliament to test persons who would be attending State Functions at Kololo Independence Grounds and over 100 people tested positive.
” The events included: Election of the Speaker (24th May 2021); the State of the Nation Address by H.E. the President (4th June 2021); and Budget Reading (10th June 2021). Three tests were done for each event.
” Over 3,000 people that included MPs, staff of Parliament, Police, ISO, SFC, Service Providers, Journalists, Prisons staff and invited guests were tested for Covid-19.Out of all those tested for the events, approximately 100 came out positive.”! The positive cases were from the sample of more than 3,000 and note that some of the patients have already made full recovery.”
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