Rwandans who received their first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine will have to wait for three more months before receiving the second dose.

The announcement by Rwanda Biomedical Center comes after over a month when around 240,000 people were vaccinated with the vaccine in March.

AstraZeneca doses are supposed to be administered 8-12 weeks apart. Medical doctors say the delay could increase the chances of the vaccine failure.

“Every vaccine works di­fferently but if the time apart is two months and the second dose delays up to a month, there is a possibility that the vaccination might fail,” a medical doctor explained, under anonymity condition.

Rwanda was expecting AstraZeneca doses from Serum Institute of India (SII) through Covax Facility. The Institute has recently announced that “in the next two months, they will be addressing the limited capacity by scaling up the vaccine production” for government and private institutions in India, according to a letter issued by the institute.

Rwanda was on standby to receive the second batch of Covid-19 vaccines with 744,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine between March and April during the second round of vaccine distribution.

The third round of vaccine distribution expected to take place between April and June, Rwanda is reserved for 100,620 doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.

World Health Organisation (WHO) Africa has assured that vaccine deliveries that were paused in March by SII will resume soon.

“We are working hard to make sure that countries that have received their first installment in early March will soon receive their second batch of doses in the next few weeks,” Dr. Richard Mihigo, Immunization and Vaccine Development Programme Coordinator said during WHO Africa online briefing on Thursday April 15.

While some countries have used up all the doses from the first round of distribution in March, Dr. Mihigo also mentioned that vaccination exercise has been slow in some other countries.

Rwanda has been administering the second dose to people who received Pfizer vaccine for the last month. The vaccination exercise is supposed to reach 50,000 people who received their fi rst dose in March.

It will be concluded on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, as the Rwanda Biomedical Center Director General, Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana announced on national radio on Wednesday.

As of April 14, 348,926 have been vaccinated, some of which are fully vaccinated with two Pfi zer doses.

Precautionary measures are still in place including a curfew that runs from 7pm to 5am in districts of Nyanza, Huye, Ruhango, Gisagara, Nyaruguru and Nyamagabe and 9pm to 5am for the rest of the country.

Public and social gatherings are only allowed to be held with a limited number of people. Covid-19 preventive are revised every 15 days by the cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame.

Rwanda plans to vaccinate 30 percent of its 12 million population before 2021 ends, which accounts for 3.5 million people.

Over 24,000 people have contracted Coronavirus since March 14, 2020 when the first case was recorded in Rwanda. 93 percent of them have recovered, 6 are in critical condition and 327 have died, as reported by the Ministry of Health on April 20, 2021.

Over 1.2 million Covid-19 tests have been conducted and the positivity rate stands at 1.7 percent.