Kenya’s effort to vaccinate at least 10 million people by December has received another boost.
Another consignment of 407,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine is expected in the country on Tuesday.
The consignment is the second batch of the 817,000 doses donated to Kenya by the UK government during President Uhuru Kenyatta’s visit.
The vaccines are expected to arrive in the country at JKIA tomorrow night, according to British High Commissioner Jane Marriot.
The first batch of 410,000 doses arrived on July 31 and were received by officials from the Health Ministry led by the CAS Mercy Mwangangi.
"Our capacity for vaccine deployment remains robust. As is common knowledge our efforts have been greatly affected by supply constraints. When we receive donations like these from friends and well-wishers, it’s a deserved shot in the arm for our vaccination efforts," Mwangangi said.
To date, Kenya has received 2.3 million vaccines with a total of 2,033,277 vaccines so far been administered across the country.
This means the country has less than 300,000 doses in stock, even as the government rolled out mass vaccination as part of the ambitious plan to vaccinate at least 10 million people before the year ends.
The proportion of the adult population fully vaccinated stands at 2.7 per cent after 746,267 people were reached with two doses of the vaccine.
“The uptake of the second dose among those who received their first dose is at 58 per cent with the majority being males at 55 per cent while females are at 45 per cent,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said in a statement.
At least 126,309 healthcare workers have been fully vaccinated, 110,342 teachers, 61,108 security officers, 227,686 people aged above 58 years and 220,822 members of the public.
Kenya is also expecting to receive 1,760,000 doses of Pfizer from the US government and another 13 million of Johnson and Johnson through the African Union – AVAT programme.
A further 55,000 doses of AstraZeneca set to arrive in the country from Lativia as part of bilateral donations.
-Edited by Skanyara
