Kenya has embarked on an ambitious campaign to vaccinate up to 80,000 Kenyans against Covid 19 every day.

The move follows the expected arrival of 4.8 million doses to boost the vaccination campaign, according to the Ministry of Health.

The revamped Covid-19 immunisation campaign is expected to be unveiled today. It will scale up a vaccination communication plan which involves community sensitisation.

Vaccines are expected in the country in the next few days include 141,000 J&J doses set to arrive this morning, through the Covax programme, 55,000 AstraZeneca doses set to arrive tomorrow from Latvia, and on Monday, the country will receive 880,000 Moderna vaccine jabs.

Health Principal Secretary (PS) Susan Mochache said the country expects to receive 1.8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the next fortnight.

Mochache said the country will  also receive an estimated two million doses of Sinopharm vaccines from China through the Covax facility in due course. 

“From today, we will be receiving multiple Covid-19 vaccines almost on a daily basis.

This raises our hopes of achieving our vaccination targets,” Mochache said.

Vaccine deployment

She was accompanied by Covid-19 national vaccine deployment task force chairman, Dr Willis Akhwale in receiving 358,200 doses of AstraZeneca from Canada at JKIA yesterday morning.

Cumulatively, the Canadian donation made it 3.6 million vaccine doses that have been deployed in the country since March 5, when the country received the first   jab.

“All these will be key in our commitment to vaccinate at least 10 million Kenyans by end of December,” said Mochache who was also accompanied by acting Canadian High Commissioner to Kenya, David Anthony and United Nations Children Education Fund, Kenya representatives.

The expected assortment of vaccines, the PS said include those the government has paid the African Union about Sh2 billion to secure, part of it being Sh200 million Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) contribution.

Kepsa is coordinating the private sector to raise funds and work through the government, to increase the number of vaccines in the country, and vaccinate the employees, their families and part to the community.

Already 263 companies have registered and committed their payments towards this effort.

This initiative is open to all private sector companies. A total of 2,792,309 vaccines had been administered across the country as of August 31, 2021.

Of these, the total first doses are 1,985,905 while second doses are 806,404.