•The relaxation of containment measures such as wearing of face masks in public by CS Mutahi Kagwe two weeks ago has resulted vaccine apathy
•This comes even as stakeholders are holding a five days meeting in Nairobi to enhance and to support Kenya to reach the vaccination targets
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
The government has stopped importing Covid vaccines due to low uptake following relaxation of containment measures.
Kenya has received more than 27 million doses to date, majorly from bilateral donations, with data from the Health ministry showing that a total of 17.3 million jabs have been administered across the country.
The ministry is now concerned that the relaxation of containment measures, such as wearing of face masks in public two weeks ago, has resulted in vaccine apathy.
“By now, we should have received about 30 million vaccine doses; we are at 27 million and looking at our pipeline by the end of the year we will have received 54 million doses which should be sufficient to vaccinate the entire population,” vaccines deployment taskforce chair Willis Akhwale said on Monday.
“However, we have started delaying some of the vaccine deliveries. The uptake is currently low, people are not showing up so we don’t want to bring vaccines that will fill our cold chain yet the demand is low."
Akhwale said the focus right now is to accelerate uptake of the doses already in the country.
This comes even as stakeholders are holding a five-day meeting in Nairobi to enhance and support Kenya to reach the vaccination targets.
Akhwale said the five-day meeting geared towards micro planning for Covid-19 vaccination in Kenya with support from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Master card Foundation.
The meeting also seeks to look at strategies to strengthen the uptake, the capacity of the vaccination, the supply chain and risk communication to the population.
“In today’s meeting we are concerned with the low numbers of Kenyans showing up for vaccination, a lot of it attributed to the low risk perception because of low positivity rate,” Akhwale said.
"I think many Kenyans are now feeling there is no need for vaccination and we need to address that risk because this is a pandemic that is still here.”
Africa CDC coordinator and Eastern Africa regional collaborating Centre Dr Achamyelesh Kifle Debela said the key area of focus is vaccine hesitancy.
Debela added that there is need to do micro planning on why there is hesitancy, what are the causes and how to address it.
She has further noted that vaccine hesitancy is a global issue but it differs from continent to continent and from member state to member state hence need to understand the cause and strategise how to address it.
“Even in member states it differs from the city to the rural area or from one region to another so it's universal," Debela said.
"However,the most important issue is to know the underlying cause and to address it.”
Kenya’s plan is to fully vaccinate at least 19 million people by June and the entire population of 27 million by the end of 2022.
Ministry data shows 7.9 million are partial vaccination while those fully vaccinated are 7.9 million.
Another 2.1 million are doses administered to those between 15 to 17 years while 269,852 are booster doses.