Last week the Sputnik 5 vaccine was authorised for use by the Poisons Board. Two days later the Health ministry overruled the Board and said Sputnik was not yet approved.
Now various private hospitals have started vaccinating Kenyans with the Sputnik vaccine at a cost of around US $55 per dose.
Kenya is importing around four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through Covax. That is only enough to vaccinate two million people from a population of nearly 50 million.
The efficacy of the Sputnik vaccine is around 91 percent according to a recent article in the British Medical Journal which is better than AstraZeneca.
The main problem with the Sputnik vaccine is that there are not enough production facilities. That is why Germany is having trouble switching to Sputnik from AstraZeneca for its vaccination programme.
And if the Health ministry is worrying about companies making profits from Covid vaccines, why don't they close down all private hospitals in Kenya?
So let Kenyans get the Sputnik vaccine immediately if they can afford it. If they can't afford it, then they can wait in the public hospitals for the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Quote of the day: "All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life on this planet."
Wangari Maathai
The Kenyan environmentalist was born on April 1, 1940
