Uganda’s authoritarian president Yoweri Museveni on Saturday announced 21-day lockdowns on the Mubende and Kassanda districts in central Uganda to control an Ebola outbreak.
Museveni said there have been 58 confirmed cases and 19 fatalities since the outbreak began on September 20.
“These are temporary measures to control the spread of Ebola. We should all cooperate with authorities so we bring this outbreak to an end in the shortest possible time,” Museveni said in a televised address to the nation.
The lockdown prevents travel to or from Mubende and Kassanda, although cargo shipments are still permitted to pass through the affected districts. Entertainment venues and houses of worship were closed, and a nighttime curfew was imposed. The police have been instructed to arrest anyone who refuses to comply with isolation orders.
NPR suggested Museveni ordered the lockdown because there has been at least one case of an infected person slipping out of the outbreak zone to seek treatment in another part of Uganda. The man in question died while being treated at a hospital in the capital of Kampala.
Ebola can be difficult to detect during its incubation period, which can last up to three weeks, and the Sudan strain active in Uganda is resistant to existing vaccines, so Ugandan health officials are worried that people traveling out of the infected areas could rapidly spread the disease.
Health authorities in Uganda reported that a man who died had tested positive for the virus that causes Ebola and referred to a potential new outbreak. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
The BBC noted Museveni had ruled out lockdowns until now, on the grounds that Ebola is not an airborne disease, so controlling it would not require the severe measures often used against Chinese coronavirus.
California health officials on Monday told doctors to be alert for symptoms of Ebola among patients who have recently visited Uganda.
The California Department of Public Health bulletin warned that while no infections have been reported in either Kampala or Entebbe, where the international airport is located, “spread of the outbreak within the region is possible due to several factors.”
Among those factors are concerns that Ebola was spreading for several weeks before the first case was officially reported, and some of the early patients may have sought treatment for their unknown ailment at clinics with “sub-optimal infection-control practices.” Four of the documented fatalities in the current outbreak were healthcare workers in Uganda.