NAIROBI, Kenya July 22 – COVID fatalities in Kenya rose to 3,826 Thursday after 15 more deaths were picked from audits in health facilities countrywide.
Health Cabine Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the deaths were from late filings in April, June and July.
Kagwe said the country’s COVD-19 infection rate was at 13.7 per cent, after 801 cases were detected from 5,850 samples tested on Wednesday.
The new cases were distributed across the counties of Nairobi (319), Mombasa (77), Nakuru (60), Uasin Gishu (45) and Kiambu (36).
The number of confirmed cases registered in the country since March 2020 stood at 195,111.
He said 481 patients had recovered from the disease, including 322 from home-based care and 159 being discharged from health facilities.
Total recoveries stood at 184,461.
Data from the Ministry showed that there were 1,248 patients admitted in various health facilities countrywide, while 3,862 were under home-based care program.
As of July 21, a total of 1,648,869 vaccines had been administered across the country. Of these total first doses were 1,042,455 while second doses were 606,414.
The proportion of fully vaccinated adults in the country was reported at 2.2 per cent, according to the Health Ministry.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has assured that by December 2021, 10 million adults will have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
He said the government had ordered had 13 million doses of the single-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine, set to arrive in August 2021.
On Wednesday COVID-19 vaccine makers BioNTech and Pfizer said it had found a South African partner to produce their jab on the African continent for the first time, the AFP reported.
The move came amid growing criticism on vaccine inequality that had seen poor countries fall behind richer ones in the race to protect people from the coronavirus.
Under the agreement, Cape Town-based Biovac will complete the last step in the manufacturing process of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, known as “fill and finish”, the companies said in a statement.
The project will take time to get off the ground however, with the first African-finished Pfizer vaccines not expected before 2022.
Once up and running, Biovac is set to churn out more than 100 million doses annually that will be distributed to the 55 countries in the African Union.
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