The Ministry of Health announced that the number of ventilators in the country will increase by four times before the end of July this year.

This was disclosed by Dr. Daniel Ngamije, Minister of Health at a parliamentary session where Prime Minister, Edouard Ngirente was presenting to legislators different measures put in place by the government to respond to Covid-19.

Allaying concerns of MPs on whether the government has the necessary infrastructure to cater for Covid-19 patients who may be in critical condition, Ngamije explained that this has been put into consideration.

He said: "So far the country has 60 ventilators that are deployed at different facilities which can be used to treat patients with severe conditions. We are also in process of upgrading our capacity in this regard, whereby we expect 200 more ventilators by the end of this month.”

According to the minister, of the expected number of ventilators, 100 are in the procurement process whereas remaining ones will be supplied by a partner whose name was not disclosed.

The move is expected to increase the country’s readiness in treating Covid-19 patients with severe conditions and have breathing difficulties.

Dr Sabin Nsanzimana, the Director General of Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) on Wednesday, July 22, told The New Times that only 4 patients have been treated using ventilators since the outbreak of this pandemic in mid-March.

He added that no patient is currently in critical condition.

The milestones

Rwanda confirmed her first Covid-19 case on March 14.

By then the country had the capacity of conducting 300 daily Covid-19 sample tests. Four months later, the country has the capacity of carrying out 5000 tests a day.

The milestone is a result of the government’s efforts to decentralise the Covid-19 testing exercise.

On this note, different from March when the country had one laboratory to process Covid-19 sample tests, Rwanda so far has additional 7 Covid-19 testing labs country-wide.

The country also increased treatment centres of this pandemic from one that was available in March to the current 17 treatment centres whose capacity is to treat 1,767 people.

The Ministry of Health recently announced that the government spent an amount of $60 million (over Rwf54 billion) in the fight against Covid-19 since March.

The government also projects to spend more $13 million up to September this year.

By Wednesday, the country has conducted a total of 221,039 Covid-19 sample tests since March and reported 1,655 Covid-19 cases, of whom 848 have already recovered.

Also, five people so far succumbed to the pandemic in the country.