The Ministry of Health has announced that it has secured 100,600 new doses of the Pfizer vaccine through the COVAX facility, a WHO-backed mechanism for equitable access to vaccines across the world. The doses have already arrived in the country and medics are getting ready to start inoculating more people with the vaccine. This will be the second batch of Pfizer vaccines the country has secured, having received the first 102,960 doses in early March. To date, more than 50,000 people have been inoculated with the Pfizer vaccine and almost all of them have received the two recommended jabs. The newly acquired doses are expected to be used to start an entirely new vaccination activity for those that have not been inoculated at all. Generally speaking, more than 350,400 people have received at least one jab of the Covid-19 vaccine in Rwanda, so far. Of these, up to 290,000 received the AstraZeneca vaccine – and these are currently getting their second jab, as Rwanda recently managed to secure an additional 247,000 doses of the vaccine. These fall short of the number needed to inoculate all the 290,000 people that received the first dose of AstraZeneca before the expiry of the 12 weeks’ recommended period. However, a source in the Ministry of Health told The New Times last week, that government expects to secure more AstraZeneca vaccines soon. Last week, WHO said Africa needs at least 20 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the next six weeks to administer second doses to all who received the first dose within the 8-12-week interval recommended in-between the doses.
