NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 25 – The Ministry of Health on Wednesday reported that Kenya is set to receive 4.5 million doses of various COVID-19 vaccines by mid September to boost an ongoing vaccination exercise.
Speaking during a virtual meeting with journalists, Vaccine Deployment Taskforce Chairperson Willis Akhwale said 1.7 million doses of Pfizer and 2 million of Sinopharm will arrive in September while 393,600 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine will arrive by the end of August. He said an additional consignment of 500,000 will be received in weeks ahead.
Akhwale however cautioned that Sinopharm is not yet approved for those over 60 years old.
“When it comes to prevention of severe disease, these vaccines are almost the same. There is no vaccine that is superior to the other. What you see in terms of comparison, is prevention of mild to moderate disease in different set ups. There has never been a study that compared the efficacy of these vaccines one to one,” said Akhwale.
He called on Kenyans to take advantage of the availability of the vaccines and get vaccinated saying that is the only way to attain herd immunity.
“There is a strong encouragement that people need to take these vaccines. There could different tactics to ensure that this encouragement goes through and it is not only in Kenya especially with other employers, you can see in other countries, people cannot go to work if they are not vaccinated. In scarcity if you choose, you may actually die,” he said.
Currently, the ministry is administering AstraZeneca and Moderna, the only vaccine types that are available in the country.
Akhwale had earlier announced that Kenyans will be vaccinated with the vaccine that will be available at the vaccination center that they visit with no option of choosing specific vaccine types.
“We are trying as much as we can to have one particular vaccine within a vaccination post and if you go there, you will be vaccinated with that vaccine. We may however have two different vaccines in the coming days when we receive Pfizer but they will be administered from different clinic areas and people will not be allowed to choose,” he said on Monday when 880,460 doses of Moderna vaccines arrived from the US through the COVAX facility.
The Health Ministry said the Moderna vaccines are part of the 1.76 million doses donated by the US government through the COVAX facility.
The Moderna doses are set to boost the ongoing nationwide vaccination exercise, supporting the government’s quest to get at least 10 million adult population vaccinated by December 25.
The vaccines were received by Health Principal Secretary Susan Mochache who announced the increase of vaccination centres from the current 800 to 3,000 to offer one specific type of vaccine.
“We plan to allocate one vaccine type to each vaccination post. We do not want to have a cross mix of vaccines within facilities so that those designated to offer Pfizer will offer Pfizer, those designated to offer Moderna or AstraZeneca will do so. This will enable people to choose which post to be vaccinated at,” Mochache said.
She said the ministry targets to vaccinate at least 150,000 people a day after receiving freezers with a 3 million dose capacity.
By August 24, over 2.5 million people had been vaccinated among them 786,340 who had receive the two shots required to be considered fully vaccinated.
Statistics placed the number of COVID-19 incidences reported since March 2020 at 230,794 with 4,564 fatalities and 215,374 recoveries.
