Rwanda has become the latest African country to fully vaccinate at least 10 percent of its population, thereby meeting the World Health Organization’s (WHO) target to do so by the end of September, reported CGTN Africa.
The Ministry of Health has reported that about 1,399,753 Rwandans have already received two vaccine doses while 1,840,527 people have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, September 20. As per the WHO data, Rwanda has received at least 3,213,610 COVID-19 vaccine doses so far.
Rwanda is the fourteenth African country to have fully vaccinated at least 10 percent of its population. Seychelles has vaccinated about 72 percent of its population vaccinated. Mauritius follows with a vaccination rate of 55 percent and Morocco with 45 percent.
The other African nations to have reached the milestone include Tunisia (26 percent), Cape Verde (19 percent), Comoros (18 percent), Eswatini (16 percent), Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa (all 13 percent), Mauritania (12 percent) and Lesotho and Equatorial Guinea (both 11 percent).
Countries that heavily rely on donor countries for receiving vaccines have generally experienced low vaccination rates as compared to those that either manufacture vaccines or have easy access to the doses.
The African continent has the lowest vaccination rate of all other continents with about two percent of the nearly six billion doses given globally being administered in the continent.
According to the WHO, the European Union, and the United Kingdom have vaccinated over 60 percent of their people and high-income countries have administered 48 times more doses per person as compared to low-income nations.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked India for resuming its vaccine shipments to other countries in October. He said the resumption of vaccine shipment will help in reaching the 40 percent vaccination target in all countries by the end of the year.
