Pfizer vaccine to be administered from today as syringes land

The Covid-19 vaccination campaign received a boost yesterday when the final batch of Pfizer vaccine syringes donated by the United States government arrived.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said a total of 2.2 million special syringes, donated alongside the vaccines, were being stored at the Kitengela Central Vaccine Store awaiting distribution.

Following the arrival of the syringes, the ministry said the administering of the vaccine will begin today.

“The final batch of special syringes to be used for Pfizer vaccines arrived in the country this morning… this now completes the batch of 2.2 million syringes from the US government,” the statement said.

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe also disclosed that an additional 35,100 Pfizer vaccines were received in Mombasa on Saturday. 

All the five major vaccines – Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca – are now available in the country.

The rollout the Pfizer jabs had been delayed by lack of proper syringes.

The government expected the US to send the syringes used to administer the doses but by last week when the vaccines were delivered, the syringes had not arrived.

While the shelf life of Pfizer’s vaccine is six months, the consignment Kenya received 10 days ago was manufactured three months ago and the interval between the first and second doses is 21 days.

Kagwe yesterday said a total of 3,874,093 vaccines had been administered in country by October 2 out of which 2,944, 584 were first dose while 929,499 people had received the second dose.

He said that the government planned to vaccinate 27,246,033 in the next few months. 

“The uptake of the second dose among those who received the first dose was 31.6 per cent. Proportion of adults fully vaccinated is 3.4 per cent,” he said.

Positivity rate

According to the data Kagwe released two days ago, a total of 929,499 people had been fully vaccinated with Nairobi leading with 338,389 which translates to 11.1 per cent followed by Nakuru with 53,304 (4.2 per cent), Kiambu 43,819 (2.7 per cent), Uasin Gishu 37,997 (5.5 per cent) and Nyeri with 37,086 (7.3 per cent).

On the Covid 19 situation in the country, Kagwe said 91 people had tested positive for the virus from a sample size of 3,435 tested in the last 24 hours, a positivity rate to 2.7 per cent.

According to the CS, a total of 918 patients were admitted in various health facilities, 1,994 were under the home-based care, 56 were in the Intensive Care Unit, 31 on ventilator support, 23 on supplemental oxygen and two under observation.

“Total confirmed positive cases are now 250,114 and cumulative tests conducted are 2,572, 609,” said Kagwe.

“Nine patients have succumbed to the disease, all of them being late deaths reported after conducting facility record audits in the months of July, August and October 2021. This now pushes the cumulative fatalities to 5,140,” he added.