• Health CAS Rashid Aman said Kenya is now not only relying on the Astrazeneca vaccine but has ordered the Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson jabs.
• Virologist Omu Anzala, who sits on the national Covid-19 task force, said Kenya is actively doing variant surveillance.
Image: ANDREW KASUKU
The Oxford-Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccine currently being used in Kenya is effective against the highly virulent Delta strain after two doses, the World Health Organization says in a new advisory.
The strain is currently driving the fourth wave in Kenya, which has led to more hospitalisations and deaths.
Experts say the fourth wave will likely surpass the second and third waves this month, with only a paltry 1.2 per cent of the population fully vaccinated.
In an advisory released on Friday, the WHO said recent estimates of the AstraZeneca vaccine's effectiveness against hospitalisation with Delta were 71 per cent after one dose and 92 per cent after two doses.
“In view of these findings, WHO currently recommends the use of ChAdOx1-S recombinant vaccine (the Oxford-Astrazeneca jab) according to the prioritisation roadmap even if virus variants are present in a country,” the WHO said in its updated recommendations.
Delta variant is estimated to be 60 per cent more infectious than the Alpha variant.
A recent study from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences has also found that “viral loads in Delta infections are [approximately] 1,000 times higher” than those caused by previous SARS-CoV-2 variants.
This means those infected shed more virus and thus infect more people.
Pathologist Dr Ahmed Kalebi said all the lessons learnt from managing the previous waves must now be applied to contain the ongoing Delta fourth wave.
“Of utmost importance are heightened measures to minimise the spread of the infection through the air, particularly by strict masking and mitigating crowding in all forms where people share rebreathed air,” he said.
Health CAS Rashid Aman said Kenya is now not only relying on the AstraZeneca vaccine but has also ordered the Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson jabs.
“The reason why we want to expand our portfolio of vaccines is that part of the strategy as we see emerging and changing situations is to try and minimise those risks by using as many many different vaccines as you can particularly the newer generation of vaccines that may have considered some of these variants that we have seen lately,” he said.
An analysis carried out in England last month showed two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which Kenya has also ordered, are about 88 per cent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 per cent effective against hospitalisation with the Delta variant.
In data released on July 28, Pfizer said the third dose of its vaccine “strongly” boosted protection against the Delta variant compared with its standard two-dose regimen.
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which Kenya has also ordered, only has a 33 per cent efficacy rate against the Delta variant, a New York University study released two weeks ago suggested, although it has not been peer reviewed.
Virologist Omu Anzala, who sits on the national Covid-19 task force, said Kenya is actively doing variant surveillance.
“So, we are trying to understand what is infecting and where these variants are and the idea is to be able to foretell that a variant is emerging before it actually emerges and causes havoc,” he said.
Edited by Henry Makori