COVID-19 continues to spread in Sudan, more than 35 Sudanese medics dead

On Wednesday, the Central Doctors Committee reported that over 35 Sudanese physicians have died during the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Sudan will receive COVID-19 vaccines in April.

They said in a statement on Wednesday that they consider the death of the medics “a heavy loss for the entire medical field in the country”.

The Sudanese Ministry of Health mourned the death of Zeinelabdin El Samani, professor of epidemiology and community medicine at El Ahfad University for Women, on its Facebook page on Wednesday.

Muntasir Osman, Deputy director of the Health Emergency and Epidemiology Department of the federal Health Ministry announced on the same day that 8.4 million doses of the new anti-coronavirus vaccine will arrive in the country in April. He expressed his hope that this will ward off the spread of the virus in the country.

Sudan has a population of more than 41 million people.

According to the latest COVID-19 report of the Health Ministry, issued on Tuesday, 23,316 new cases were recorded in the country since the pandemic reached Sudan in March. 1,468 people died of the disease, 13,524 recovered. The majority of the cases was registered in Khartoum: 18,084.

According to a report issued by the Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team on December 1, only two per cent of all COVID-19 deaths in Khartoum are recorded.

Alarming

Yesterday, the Health Ministry of Khartoum state announced the registration of 275 new coronavirus patients within 24 hours.

Mahjoub Tajelsir, Director of the Khartoum Ministry of Health, said in his epidemiological report on Wednesday, that the high infection rates require “the sounding of the alarm”. He said that Khartoum locality continues to report the highest infection rates, compared with the other seven localities of the state.

Doctor Sarah Abdeljalil, medical consultant in the United Kingdom, called for a partial lockdown in the most affected states and restricted public transport. She told Radio Dabanga that such measures require an economic package programme to support the workers in the informal sector. Free face masks and sterilisers should be distributed to vulnerable people.

Face masks

In Red Sea state, 300,000 face masks will be distributed to school and university students in the state, Taha Badawi, Rapporteur of the COVID-19 High Chamber told Radio Dabanga on Wednesday.

Following a meeting of the High Chamber for COVID-19 Crisis Management in Port Sudan yesterday, Badawi said that the meeting reviewed the continuing spread of coronavirus in the state, the state of health emergency, and the initiative “A mask for every student”.

Oxygen

The federal Ministry of Health will supply oxygen cylinders to COVID-19 treatment centres in the country.

The ministry reported this morning that a contract was signed with Iqbal International, to provide 500 medical oxygen cylinders at a total cost of SDG 12.5 million.

In a press statement, the director of the ministry’s finance department, Mohamed Abdelmunim, thanked the Sudanese Doctors Association in the USA for their offer to pay for the cylinders. The Health Ministry will be responsible for the refilling.

* USD 1 = SDG 55.1375 at the time of posting, according to the daily middle US Dollar rate quoted by the CBoS. Effective foreign exchange rates however can vary widely on Sudan’s parallel market, where the greenback is selling today for SDG 264.

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