The Ministry of Health will start administering the Covid-19 vaccine to children under the age of 12, tentatively from September. There will be an official communication that will be issued before the vaccination process starts. “I will not be precise on the dates, but if you have been following the announcements, the State Minister for Health had declared that it is going to start very soon, probably in the month of September,” Julien Niyingabira, the Division Manager of the Rwanda Health Communication Centre (RHCC) told The New Times in an exclusive interview on Monday, August 8. Whereas children of such age are at a low risk of being severely affected by Covid-19, Niyingabira said it is good to vaccinate them since it reduces their chances of contracting and spreading the virus to other people. “Even though we did not have many severe paediatric cases of Covid-19, we know that children can be carriers of this virus and can spread it so easily. So, the more we get them vaccinated, the less the virus is going to circulate among them and among adults,” he noted. He added that the vaccines that the children will be receiving will be based on a paediatrically modified formula for children, and before any child is inoculated, consent will first be sought from their parents or guardians. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Covid-19 infections among children and adolescents cause less severe illness compared to adults. A number of countries, especially in the West, started inoculating children under 12 last year. These include Germany, Spain, Greece among others. Rwanda’s current Covid-19 vaccination campaign covers children from 12 years and above.
