Watoto Church Choir hit by Covid-19 as 11 are taken ill
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has announced 11 more cases of coronavirus, six of whom are children.
The 11 were part of 176 samples tested by the health ministry on Tuesday. Now the number of positive cases in Uganda stands at 44.
“Out of the 176 people tested, 11 of them tested positive and are all children of Watoto Church Choir who are still in quarantine. They picked the disease from outside,” Mr Museveni said in a televised address he convened to clarify on the preventive measures he issued on Monday night against the spread of the virus.
The children had returned from the United Kingdom and were put under quarantine immediately.
Six girls aged between seven and 10 who had travelled to the UK also tested positive.
The other case is a 26-year-old male resident of Katabi, Wakiso district.
A 27-year-old female resident of Kavule, Makerere who had also travelled to the UK tested positive.
The second victim is a 27-year-old male resident of Mpererwe, Wakiso who arrived from the United Kingdom.
The cases include a 29-year-old female resident of Kyanja, Nakawa who is a contact to one of the previously confirmed cases.
The other victim is a 30-year-old male resident of Kisaasi, Kampala who had also travelled to the UK.
Museveni said it was useless to conduct mass testing without symptoms because someone can test negative then get exposed to the disease the following day.
Meanwhile, Botswana has recorded its first three cases, the Minister of Health and Wellness Lemogang Kwape announced on Monday.
Kwape said the three patients are two males and a female, who had travelled from Thailand and the United Kingdom respectively.
Kwape further indicated that Covid-19 patients are already in isolation undergoing treatment.
Botswana is one of the two countries in the Southern Africa bloc, which was still a green zone, which had not recorded any positive cases of covid- 19.