Omicron: Kenya won't administer Covid vaccines booster jabs yet

Kenya will not begin the issuance of Covid-19 vaccines booster shots despite the lurking danger of the new Omicron variant.

So far, the variant has spread to more than 40 countries with 23 of them having recorded cases of the strain in the last two days.

The Health Ministry has however disclosed that consultations on whether to administer a booster jab are ongoing and an announcement will be made at the right time.

The new highly mutated variant isolated in South Africa last week has prompted many countries to impose new travel restrictions.

“We have been getting a lot of requests as to when Kenya will begin the administration of booster doses. For the time being our focus is to ensure we reach the elderly people even with one dose,” Vaccines deployment taskforce chair Willis Akhwale said.

“The ministry is doing internal consultations, we are also consulting our technical working groups on the issue of booster doses and we are going to make an announcement at an appropriate time as to when we are going to begin the booster doses,” he added.

The highly transmissible variant has sparked fears of another deadly wave of infections signalling that the fight against the pandemic is far from over.

Experts and researchers are working round the clock to get more data on the variant, including its severity, ability to evade vaccines and level of transmissibility.

This is expected to take weeks to understand the virus even as the World Health Organisation and Africa CDC have called for calm.

Although genome sequencing is needed to confirm omicron cases, some PCR tests can be able to pick the variant that distinguishes itself from Delta.

Delta however still accounts for 99 per cent of infections worldwide.

“There is no need to panic. We are not defenceless. We are very concerned but are not worried that the situation cannot be managed,” head of Africa CDC John Nkengasong said.

It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes severe disease compared to infections caused by other variants including the now dominant delta variant, but preliminary data have shown an increased rate of hospitalisations in South Africa.

The WHO has also said there is no current information to suggest that symptoms associated with Omicron are different from those from other variants.

“Initially reported infections were among university students, younger individuals who tend to have more mild disease, but understanding the level of severity of the Omicron variant will take days to several weeks,” WHO said.

Akhwale has noted that the mass vaccination that has been accelerated in the country targets the elderly who are at higher risk of severe disease and have accounted for more than 80 per cent of the Covid-19 deaths in the country.

Vaccination in this age group however remains a concern with slightly above 18 per cent vaccinated against the 98 per cent among healthcare workers and 91 per cent among teachers.

“But let me emphasize that for the time being we really want to make sure a partial vaccination is better than no vaccination, full vaccination is what we want now and the issue of booster doses we will be informing Kenyans in due course.”

The WHO has said the variant is likely to spread internationally and poses a very high risk of infection surges that could have "severe consequences" in some places.

Kenya last week announced it will not ban flights to and from nations where Omicron has been reported.

“The focus of our current coronavirus plan is ensuring as many eligible people as possible get their first doses. This should also be the focus of the world so that there is vaccine equity and equality,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said.

“We may consider boosters once we achieve this critical mass,” Kagwe added.

Kenya has so far received more than 16 million doses of vaccines after more than five million arrived in the country last week with more expected to arrive in the country before the end of December.

As of Friday, a total of 7.5 million vaccines had so far been administered across the country with 2.9 people being fully vaccinated.

The proportion of the adult population fully vaccinated stands at 10.8 per cent.

Edited by D Tarus