410,000 Covid jabs to land from Britain today – Akhwale

Kenya is set to receive 410,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from the United Kingdom (UK) tomorrow morning.

The chairman of the Covid-19 Vaccine Taskforce Dr Willis Akhwale said the donations are part of the deals inked during  President Uhuru Kenyatta visit to the UK.

 Akhwale further said the country will from next week receive 1.76 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, 235,000 AstraZeneca doses from Greece, 55,000 from Latvia while Covax has allocated 407,040 doses of AstraZeneca and 271,440 of Pfizer.

“Kenya has procured 13 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The delivery of these vaccines will start next month,” he said.

New vaccines

 According to Akhwale, the new vaccines will play a big role in boosting vaccination efforts by ensuring that close to 10 million people will be vaccinated by December and the entire adult population by the end of 2022.

The government, he added, through the AVAT-AU mechanism has procured 13 million doses of Johnson and Johnson and that the delivery of the vaccines will start next month.

“In preparation for the deployment of Pfizer vaccines which require storage at minus 70 degrees Celsius, Kenya will be receiving 15 Ultra Cold Chain freezers from the UPS Foundation of the US within the next two weeks valued at 150,000 US dollars.

These freezers will be distributed to the Central Vaccine Store in Kitengela and all the nine regional vaccine stores across the Country,” he explained.

The Ministry says a total of 1,707,734 vaccines have so far been administered across the country. Of these, total first doses are 1,055,341 while second doses are 647,393.

 “The uptake of the second dose among those who received their first dose is at 61.3 per cent with the majority being males at 55 per cent while females are at 45 per cent.

Proportion of adults fully vaccinated is 2.37 per cent,” said the Ministry.

Kenya yesterday recorded 1,068 new Covid-19 cases from a sample size of 7,398 tested in the last 24 hours marking a positivity rate of now 14.4 per cent.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said the total confirmed positive cases are now 201,009 and cumulative tests so far conducted are 2,116,979.

At the same time 15 patients have succumbed to the disease, all of them being late deaths reported after conducting facility record audits on diverse dates in the months of June and July 2021. This pushes total fatalities to 3,910.

Meanwhile, 398 patients have recovered with 255 from the Home-Based Isolation and Care programme while 143 are from various health facilities.