The East African country received nearly 103,000 doses of
the vaccine at the capital Kigali through the UN-led Covax initiative, which
aims to provide equitable access to Covid-19 jabs for poorer countries.
Pfizer said the first shipment to Africa of its vaccine
represented “an important milestone for the region, for Rwanda, and for the
global health partners working tirelessly to fight this pandemic”.
“Our goal is to make vaccines accessible worldwide and
today’s delivery to Rwanda is a great step forward,” said Janine Small, Pfizer
Global President for Emerging Markets, in a statement.
An official at Rwanda’s health ministry told AFP the
vaccines — which must be kept at ultra-low temperatures — were “immediately
transported to cold room freezers” upon arrival at Kigali aboard on a KLM
flight at around 2015 local time (1815 GMT).
Earlier in the day, Rwanda took separate possession of
240,000 doses of the AstraZeneca jab, its first delivery under the Covax
facility.
The health ministry said the collective 340,000 doses would
be dispatched Thursday from a biomedical warehouse in Kigali to district
hospitals and onward to hundreds of health centres dotted across Rwanda.
Vaccinations will begin Friday, with the country of 12
million planning to inoculate 30 percent of its population this year, and 60
percent by the end of 2022.
The ministry said the vaccine shipment should protect about 171,500 frontline personnel, as well as other priority citizens such as those over 65 or with underlying health conditions.
“We will immediately roll out our prepared vaccination plan,
which will see target risk groups across Rwanda receive their first of two
vaccine doses,” Health Minister Daniel Ngamije said in a statement.
In February, Rwanda became the first country in East Africa to begin vaccinating against the disease, targeting high-risk groups such as healthcare workers after acquiring around 1,000 doses of the Moderna jab.
Rwanda has carried out more than a million coronavirus tests
and detected just over 19,100 cases. As of Wednesday, 265 people had lost their
lives to the disease.
It imposed some of the strictest anti-coronavirus measures
on the continent, including one of Africa’s first total shutdowns in March
2020. It put capital Kigali back under a full lockdown in January after a surge
in cases.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine is based on different technology
to AstraZeneca’s, and is expected to be much more effective in protecting
against the onset of Covid-19 when transmitted through the South African
variant.
AFP
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