NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 23 – Kenya’s Ministry of Health on Friday reported 787 new COVID-19 cases that were detected from a sample size of 6,892, raising the total caseload in the country to 195,898.
This reflects a positivity rate of 11.4 percent.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said 1,259 patients were admitted to various hospitals across the country, including 158 in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Kagwe said 12 patients had succumbed to the disease with one of them having occurred in the last 24 hours, while 11 were late deaths reports from audits in the month of July pushing fatalities to 3,838.
424 patients were discharged after recovering from the virus raising the total recoveries to 184,885.
By July 23, 1,661,560 people had been vaccinated, among them 616,922 who have received their second jab.
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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