Sixty per cent of the total population of Rwanda are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the Rwandan Ministry of Health. This was communucated in a tweet by the Ministry of Health on Thursday, March 3, as the country marked one year since the first shipment of vaccines under Covax facility was delivered in Rwanda. The first batch of 240,000 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine arrived in Kigali on March 3, 2021. It was soon followed by a second shipment of 102,960 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, also from the COVAX facility that arrived in the evening of the same day. To date, COVAX has shipped almost 15 million doses to Rwanda, according to information from GAVI. “Over the course of one year, and despite challenges, Rwanda has championed the COVID-19 vaccination effort in Africa, consistently meeting its national targets and rapidly increasing coverage, said Jamilya Sherova, Senior Country Manager at Gavi in a statement. “Within three weeks of the COVID-19 vaccination launch, over 348,000 people had received their first dose, and in September-December 2021 alone, vaccination coverage increased by 30%. Gavi is the Vaccine Alliance which leads on procurement and delivery at scale for COVAX, managing the COVAX Facility and the Gavi COVAX Advance Market Commitment. Reflecting on Rwanda’s progress, Sherova said, “Rwanda also was the first country to roll out the Pfizer vaccine on the continent, which meant procuring additional ultra-cold chain infrastructure and preparing for the logistical challenge of storing and administering the vaccine.” She congratulated Rwanda, “for a year of tremendous progress, for exceeding 2021 targets and for protecting millions of lives, including health and social care workers, the elderly, and those at highest risk, reinforcing its status as a leading African nation when it comes to public health.” The latest Covid-19 update by Rwanda Biomedical Centre shows that more than 7.8 million Rwandans have been fully vaccinated against the virus while more than 8.8 million people have been partially jabbed. More than 1.5 million people have also received a booster dose. As part of the ongoing efforts, the government of Rwanda had issued Covid vaccine mandates for crowded areas and other specific places like markets, places of worship, restaurants, and bars among others. The government recently broadened the ban on unvaccinated people to all public places by requiring all citizens and Rwandan residents to get fully vaccinated in order to access public spaces and events. Rwanda met the World Health Organization’s global target for countries to vaccinate 40 percent of their populations by the end of last year. It has a goal of reaching a 70 percent target by June 2022. In November last year, the Ministry of Health extended the vaccination programme to cover children of 12 years old and above.
