Rwandan health officials are discussing the possibility of offering a third booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine to the most vulnerable populations in the country.

Speaking at a World Health Organisation (WHO) press conference on Thursday, October 28, Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana, the Director-General of the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), said the booster shot is a subject they are monitoring in their local scientific group.

However, he noted that currently, the focus is on providing the first shot to more Rwandans.

"Some countries have already started to offer booster doses for the most vulnerable people who are likely to have less immune response to the previous two doses received. In Rwanda we are also discussing this in our scientific group,” he said, empathising that the focus was people who have not received even a single dose, because they are quite many.

He added:  "We are following the science, as we get more and more data on the use of the booster dose. It is something we are discussing.”

Countries like Canada, the United States of America and Australia have endorsed the administration of the third dose to select populations.

Nations are also putting in place scientific guidelines for the booster dose. In Canada, for instance, an interval of at least two months or eight weeks between the second and third dose is recommended for those eligible.

The Canadian Ministry of Health notes that the minimum interval should be 28 days, but says that "an interval longer than the minimum 28 days between doses is likely to result in a better immune response.”

Health officials in Canada say, for example, that the third dose is to be given to populations that have demonstrated a suboptimal immune response to a complete two-dose Covid-19 vaccine series due to their underlying conditions.

This includes, for example, individuals receiving active treatment like chemotherapy, recipients of solid-organ transplant and taking immunosuppressive therapy, and recipients of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T-cell therapy or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (within 2 years of transplantation or taking immunosuppression therapy).

Among others are individuals with moderate to severe primary immunodeficiency, those with stage 3 or advanced untreated HIV infection and those with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and people receiving active treatment with the following categories of immunosuppressive therapies.

Currently, more than 3.7 million people in Rwanda have received at least the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. More than 1.9 million of these have received two shots of the vaccine.

Rwanda’s target is to vaccinate at least a third of its population by the end of the year, rising to 60 per cent next year.