A consignment of up to 647,080 doses of the American-made Moderna Covid-19 vaccine arrived in Uganda on Monday.
The vaccine doses that have been donated by the US government arrived at around 6pm.
National Medical Stores (NMS) spokesperson, Sheila Nduhukire said the “Ministry of Health will handover the consignment to NMS for onward storage and distribution.”
UPDATE: A consignment of 647,080 doses of the American-made Moderna Covid-19 vaccine have arrived in Uganda. NMS spokesperson, Sheila Nduhukire says the “Ministry of Health will handover the consignment to NMS for onward storage and distribution.” #MonitorUpdates 📹NMS pic.twitter.com/77Il7relPv
– Daily Monitor (@DailyMonitor) September 6, 2021
Prof Sserwadda had Sunday told Daily Monitor that the “logistics for Moderna is much more challenging than AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson in terms of temperature needs.”
Information from the US Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention indicates that the vaccine is “stored in a freezer between -50°C and -15°C.” AstraZeneca is stored at the usual temperature of the refrigerator which is +2°C to 8°C, according to the World Health Organisation.
Mr Moses Kamabare, the general manager of National Medical Stores, said there was no need for alarm because they have capacity to store the vaccines.
“We are already storing Ebola vaccines at -80 degrees centigrade,” he said.
Information from US CDC also revealed that at the point of administering, the Moderna vaccine should be kept “between 2°C and 25°C for up to 12 hours.”
The vaccines come at a time when people who are due for the second dose are struggling to access the jabs.
As of August 30, a total of 1.37m people had been vaccinated with AstraZeneca and Sinovac. Of these, 977,889 had received their first dose and 399,097 had received their second dose. The country plans to vaccinate 22m people.