Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) is conducting mass testing to trace the current situation of Covid-19 in schools. According to RBC officials, 50 students will be sampled out of each school in Kigali City and upcountry, and where a school has a considerably bigger number of students, more than 50 of them will be tested. “The ongoing mass testing is for us to have a clear picture of the status of the pandemic in the community as well as in schools,” Dr. Albert Tuyishime, Head of HIV/AIDS, Diseases Prevention and Control Department at RBC said. He further added that the campaign is expected to last until January 22 and the conclusion will be derived from data that will be compiled. This comes almost two weeks after students returned to school for the second trimester. On January 15, the Minister of State in charge of Primary Healthcare, Lt. Col. Dr Tharcisse Mpunga said that statistics from the Covid-19 tests conducted as students returned to school indicated that the positivity rate was at 0.2 per cent, which meant that “there is likely low transmissibility rate among them at school.” From data of RBC, Mpunga also revealed during a recent briefing that 77 per cent of adolescents in Rwanda have received Covid-19 vaccine, and more were to be vaccinated during a mass vaccination drive targeting 1.8 million people. Rwanda started inoculating adolescents on November 23 last year, when a mass vaccination campaign was rolled out in schools, some were able to get their second dose during the holidays and others will be jabbed in an upcoming campaign.
