Kenya has received the first order of Covid-19 vaccine doses that landed Wednesday midnight at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport(JKIA).

Cabinet Secretaries (CS)Mutahi Kagwe(Health) James Macharia(Transport) and Principal Secretary Susan Mochache(Health) received the jabs that landed a few minutes to midnight aboard Qatar Airways.

Visibly elated, CS Kagwe said the landing of Covid-19 vaccine was momentous in Kenya’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is an exciting moment for our nation, we’re very excited about this. Receiving the vaccine for the first time in our country. We have been fighting the virus with rubber bullets but what we have received is an equivalent of machine guns, bazookas and tanks,” said CS Kagwe.

Kenya’s first batch of 1.02 million AstraZeneca jabs is from an initiative dubbed COVAX aimed at availing vaccines to low income countries which would otherwise find it hard to compete with the first world nations in purchasing the vaccines.

Ghana was the first country in Africa to import the vaccines under the initiative. Kenya becomes fourth after Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

The doses will be stored in Kitengela at a state facility.