Kenya’s effort to ensure at least 10 million people are vaccinated before Christmas has received a major boost with the arrival of additional vaccines from the UK government.
The 400,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines donated by the UK government are expected to arrive at JKIA on Saturday at 1 pm.
In an effort to meet President Uhuru Kenyatta’s targets that aim to ensure that at least 10 million Kenyans are vaccinated by Christmas this year and 26 million people by end of next year.
The government announced on Wednesday during the resumption of the administration of the first Covid jab to the priority groups.
To attain herd immunity the country is supposed to vaccinate at least 60 per cent of the population.
The Health Ministry towards the end of May halted the issuance of the first AstraZeneca dose after experiencing challenges in the supply chain, thus restricting the available doses to giving the second dose to those who had already received the first.
But in his tour to the UK, the President secured 817,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines during his trip to London.
The announcement came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets Uhuru in Britain.
These are part of the first tranche of the UK's commitment to share 100 million vaccine doses internationally by next June.
Through bilateral donations, Kenya expects to receive 1.7 million doses of Pfizer from the US Government, 410,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the UK government, 235,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Greece and another 55,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Latvia.
“Covax has informed us of an improvement in their acquisition of vaccines. They have allocated Kenya 407,040 doses of AstraZeneca and 271,440 doses of Pfizer,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe assured.
Kenya has also procured an additional 13 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson through the AVAT-AU mechanism with the delivery of the vaccines expected to start in August.
