State now seeks to vaccinate all adults by December

The government plans to vaccinate all adults against Covid by the end of the year, according to a revised schedule.

To achieve herd immunity, the Ministry of Health now says it will target to vaccinate at least 19 million adult Kenyans by June.

In new plans by the ministry, the targets have been revised to ensure people at risk are fully vaccinated.

Vaccines deployment task force chairperson Willis Akhwale said the ministry aims to fully vaccinate at least 19 million adults by the end of June.

At the same time, the focus will be reaching at least 2.9 million teens aged between 15 and 17 years with the Pfizer vaccine during the same period.

According to Akhwale, during the same period, the plan is to ensure 4.2 million Kenyans who had been fully vaccinated by the end of December last year, get their booster shots.

“In December alone, we administered three million doses of vaccines which is a very good pointer that we can even vaccinate more people,” he said.

“We are just at early stages of 2022. We have since revised our targets, the focus of Covid-19 vaccination during 2022 is to fully vaccinate the people at risk, the eligible people and full vaccination is not just the number of vaccines administered,” he added.

Data from the ministry shows that as at Sunday, 11.5 million vaccines had so far been administered across the country; 6.3 million being partial vaccinations, 5.08 million full vaccinations while another 36,792 are doses administered to those between 15 to 18 years.

Those who have so far received their booster doses were 115,407 out of the 370,000 that are eligible as per records by the ministry.

So far, Kenya has received 24.6 million vaccines mostly from bilateral donations with an additional 1.36 million doses of Pfizer having arrived in the country on Monday from the US government.

The vaccines are to be distributed to the nine regional stores countrywide with immediate effect.

“Our focus now is to reach people through various channels outreaches, organised campaigns but we are also ensuring that these vaccines are available within routine health services,” Akhwale said.

He added, “With the number of vaccine doses we have in Kenya, if anybody now got severe Covid they will only have themselves to blame. We have enough doses and have put a lot of efforts, we have a lot of support and we are urging Kenyans to get fully vaccinated and get boosted.”

The government has been working towards vaccinating a targeted population of 27 million by the end of 2022 after hitting the 10 million 2021 December targets.

Nairobi county has so far fully vaccinated 37.9 per cent (1.1 million) of the targeted 3.05 million population followed by Kiambu with 419,490 of the targeted 1.6 million people having been fully vaccinated.

Kakamega has so far vaccinated 215,138 of the targeted 982,838 people, Nakuru 264,014 of the targeted 1.2 million while Nyeri full vaccination status stands at 35.3 per cent representing 180,2646 of the targeted 510,028 people.

On the other hand, some other counties have continued to record lower numbers with Tana River having fully vaccinated 6,874, Isiolo with 11,212, Marsabit with 14,457, Wajir with 17,263 while Mandera has fully vaccinated 20,656 of the population.

On the booster shots, Wajir is yet to administer a single dose while Mandera, Lamu, Tana River, Garissa, Marsabit, Turkana, West Pokot and Isiolo have administered just nine, 12, 22, 33, 37, 76, 94 and 99 doses respectively compared to 54,862 in Nairobi,  8,213 in Nakuru, 5,747 in Uasin Gishu, 5,576 in Kiambu and 4,991 in Mombasa.

-Edited by SKanyara