Juba, 25 March 2022 - one year ago on 25 March 2021, South Sudan received its first COVID-19 doses from the COVAX Facility and launched vaccinations on 6 April 2021 with these donations. To date, over 500 000 people have been fully vaccinated and efforts are ongoing to increase vaccine uptake to reach a wider proportion of the population.

Since the first shipments, the country received 1.1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, all from the COVAX Facility. Of these, 584 463 doses have been administered and 3.6% of the total population has been fully vaccinated.

The major challenge South Sudan has faced since the first vaccines arrived, was the lack of operational funding to implement the COVID-19 vaccination programme. Through extensive coordination with key NGO partners, and effective advocacy with in-country donors, the vaccination was expanded.  COVID-19 vaccination is currently conducted in 579 health facilities in all 80 counties. Insecurity and flooding are impeding access to many parts of South Sudan, increasing the cost of reaching remote populations with health care delivery, including vaccination.

“Despite the major challenges with vaccine supplies at the beginning, South Sudan Ministry of Health and partners have made great efforts to increase the vaccine uptake, including expanding vaccination sites, ensuring effective use of available stocks, mobilizing communities and addressing doubts and misinformation,” said Dr Fabian Ndenzako, WHO Representative a.i. in South Sudan.

“WHO congratulates South Sudan on getting this far and will continue to support the government and its partners to achieve its goals.”

To increase demand, South Sudan is emphasizing its efforts on integrating COVID-19 vaccination in routine immunization, as well as through the implementation of accelerated vaccination activities in prioritized States. During the pilot phase of the accelerated vaccination activity, almost 70,000 people were fully vaccinated in one week, significantly increasing the monthly utilization rate for COVID-19 vaccines.

WHO continues to support the country to scale up COVID-19 vaccine uptake, which will hopefully limit the emergence of variants, as well as stepping up surveillance, genome sequencing capacity, increasing testing to facilitate early detection and response to cluster of cases. WHO is also continuing to support the efforts to adhere to public health and social measures until the pandemic is controlled.