Rwandan Health Minister Daniel Ngamije on Tuesday said the country has received 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to begin rollout of the second jabs for its citizens starting April 2, reported Anadolu Agency.
Speaking at a press conference in the capital Kigali, Ngamije assured that everyone who received the first vaccine dose would get the second jab on time.
The Rwandan health minister said a total of 290,000 people have received the first jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccine so far, while 51,000 have received Pfizer jabs.
The Pfizer vaccine was mainly given to the people in Kigali as the vaccine needed to be preserved in special freezers at an extreme temperature of minus 70 C (minus 94 F). It became the first African country to inoculate the Pfizer vaccine.
Ngamije said besides the vaccines procured so far, Rwanda is expecting to get 200,000 more vaccine doses via the COVAX facility. The first shipment of 240,000 doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine and 102,960 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was received via COVAX earlier this month.
The Rwandan government began its vaccination campaign on March 5 targeting priority risk groups, including health personnel, frontline workers, and people older than 65 years or with underlying health conditions. The target group was later extended to include people aged 60 and above, security personnel, public transport drivers, and market vendors.
Some 348,926 Rwandans have been inoculated so far.
Rwanda is planning to vaccinate 30% of the population by the end of the year and 60% by 2022. The health ministry has confirmed 21,490 COVID-19 cases including 305 deaths as of late Monday.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe also received 1 million doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday. The Zimbabwean government received its first batch of 200,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses donated by the Chinese government last month.
