NAIROBI, Kenya Sep 13 – The Ministry of health reported 17 new COVID-19 deaths Monday but all of them were from late filings discovered after health facility audits.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the new deaths pushed the cumulative fatalities in the country so far to 4,923 since March 2020 when the virus was first detected in the country.
The ministry also reported 204 new COVID-19 infections raising the total caseload in the country to 243,929.
Kagwe said the new cases were detected from a sample size of 2,963 on tests conducted on Sunday. The country’s positivity rate stood at 6.9 percent by September 14.
Kagwe said 1,555 patients were admitted to various hospitals across the country among them 138 are in the Intensive Care Unit.
By September 13, more than 3 million people had been vaccinated – for the first dose at 2,270,827 and second dose 828,980.
The uptake of the second dose among those who received their first jab was at 36.5 percent with the majority being males at 56 percent while females were at 44 percent.
Kenya received 210,000 more doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine Monday from the government of Poland to boost efforts to vaccinate at least 10 million people by December.
The vaccines were received at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) by the head of the Kenya Covid-19 vaccine Taskforce Dr. Willis Akhwale.
“With this availability of vaccine doses, we are now able to vaccinate many more people. And therefore, this is the time for Kenyans to really present themselves to vaccination posts to receive the jab,” he said
Kenya has deployed AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson and Moderna vaccines and is expecting Sinopharm from China and Pfizer from the US in the coming days, according to officials at the Ministry of Health.
About The Author
