Kenya has missed 612,000 of the total Covid-19 vaccine doses it was promised last month after reallocations by the Covax facility.
The country will now receive a total of 3,564,000 doses and not the 4,176,000 announced early last month.
This forms the round one of the February-May supplies and all countries will get more doses from June.
Gavi said the announcement made last month only gave estimates based on the prevailing knowledge of supply availability and was subject to change.
From the latest list released on Tuesday, some countries such as South Africa have given up their allocations of the AstraZeneca vaccine and those doses will be distributed to other countries.
“This list will be updated by the end of the week to provide indicative timelines for the supply of these doses, split into February-March and April-May,” said Gavi, which is leading the Covax facility.
Kenya received 1.02 million doses on Tuesday and is now awaiting a balance of 2,544,000 before May.
“The latest information we have is the second batch will arrive in three to four weeks’ time,” Willis Akhwale, chairman of the Covid-19 task force for vaccine deployment, told the Star.
It is still unclear how many doses will be brought in the second delivery.
However, Akhwale said Kenya has changed its initial plans to vaccinate only 500,000 people with the first allocation and will instead vaccinate one million.
The AstraZeneca vaccine requires two doses per person given three or four weeks apart.
“This is because the second dose will arrive within the 28 days required for the second dose, so we opted to vaccinate more people,” he said.
In addition, Unicef is providing 1,025,000 syringes and 10,250 safety boxes to Kenya via a global stockpile funded and supported by Gavi.
Tanzania and Burundi, which still deny existence of Covid-19 in their countries, have still not been allocated any vaccine.
All other East African countries will also receive less after the reallocation.
Uganda will get 3,024,000 instead of 3,552,000 doses; Rwanda 846,960 instead of 1,098,960; South Sudan will now get 732,000 and not 864,000 while Ethiopia will get 7,620,000 instead of 8,928,000.
“This first round allocation outlines delivery of 237 million doses of the AZ/Oxford vaccine – manufactured by AstraZeneca and licensed and manufactured by Serum Institute of India, to 142 [Covax] facility participants,” Gavi said in a statement.
Kenya’s Health ministry has developed a deployment plan for the vaccines, with healthcare workers and other essential workers including security personnel, being offered the vaccine first.
Vaccines will be moved from the central vaccine store in Kitengela to nine regional vaccine stores, from where the counties will collect and distribute the vaccines to local hospitals at the county and sub-county level.
The first vaccination sites will be one nominated vaccinating health facility per county, the national referral hospitals and select private health facilities.
Edited by Henry Makori
