The country has received another batch of 182,400 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine.
The consignment arrived at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in the morning and was received by Dr Willis Akhwale, the Ministry of Health Chairman of COVID Vaccine Deployment Taskforce, French Political Counsellor Emmanuel Dagron and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund(UNICEF) Representative Maniza Zaman.
The vaccines were donated by the Government of France to the Covax facility and transported by Unicef.
“The Kenya Government is very grateful to the Government of France for this generous donation, which will support our national Covid-19 vaccination campaign,” Akhwale said.
He added that the country has recently embarked on vaccinating people for the second dose.
He noted that the donation will ensure health workers, teachers and other essential workers are protected, and that health centres countrywide can continue providing vital care to people affected by Covid-19.
The donation will boost the national Covid-19 vaccination campaign that has been hampered by a shortage of AstraZeneca doses.
UNICEF Representative to Kenya Maniza Zaman urged rich nations to avail the vaccines to Africa where essential workers are still unprotected.
“Vaccine equity is essential if we are to ensure that everyone at risk from Covid-19 gets vaccinated, wherever they live. In some high-income countries, young people are now being vaccinated, while in Africa many health workers, teachers and elderly people are still unprotected. We have to keep working to make the issue of vaccine availability and access much fairer than it is currently,” said Zaman.
WHO Representative to Kenya Dr Rudi Eggers welcomed the gesture by France and assured that the vaccines are safe.
“Thanks to donations like these, frontline health workers in Kenya who have yet to get their second dose of Covid-19 vaccine, have another opportunity and will be protected as they treat COVID patients and provide essential health services,” he said.
President Macron has pledged to give 60 million doses of vaccine to countries in need around the world, including Kenya, before the end of 2021.
As of yesterday, a total of 1,511,693 vaccines have so far been vaccinated across the country.
Of these, total first doses are 1,021,982 while second doses are 489,711.
The uptake of the second dose among those who received their first dose is at 47.9 per cent with the majority being males at 55 per cent while females are at 45 per cent,” said the Ministry.
The Ministry of Health says the proportion of adults fully vaccinated is 1.88 per cent.