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President Uhuru Kenyatta was vaccinated against COVID-19 on March 26, 2021.

Corona Virus

Only 4.6 per cent vaccinated in Kenya as it races to beat 10 million target by Christmas

NAIROBI, Kenya Oct 26 – Kenya had vaccinated 4.9 million people for COVID-19 by October 24 as it races against time to beat the December deadline of 10 million people.

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said 4,944, 441 vaccines have so far been administered to Kenyans across the country, urging more people to turn up for the jab.

3,513,683 have been partially vaccinated while those fully vaccinated are 1,430,758 a low number given the target set by the government.

Kenya is deploying Astrazenecca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in the vaccination drive.

Nairobi County is the highest with 16.4% of its population having been fully vaccinated.

The Health Ministry said that in a target population of 3,052,494 above 18 years, 500,949 had been fully inoculated.

Nyeri county ranks second with 71,811 out of the 510,028 targeted population having been fully vaccinated, amounting to 14.1 percent.

However, Lamu, Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, and Marsabit are trailing in the vaccination numbers with less than 1% of their population fully vaccinated.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Wednesday last week ordered the immediate lifting of a coronavirus curfew in force since March 2020 and unveiled a stimulus package to try to revitalise the battered economy.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the East African powerhouse hard, particularly in the vital tourism sector, and led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Kenyatta announced his decision to end the dusk-to-dawn curfew to cheers and applause at an event to mark Mashujaa Day, a public holiday to honour those who contributed to the country’s independence struggle.

“With significant progress registered in the containment of Covid-19, it is now time to shift our focus from survival to co-existing with the disease,” he said.

Kenya has reported more than 250,000 cases of the new coronavirus, including over 5,000 deaths, since the start of the pandemic.

But inoculation rates remain low, with only 4.6 percent of the adult population fully vaccinated, according to the latest government data.

However Kenyatta said the country was on target to meet his goal of vaccinating 10 million people by Christmas, out of a population of almost 54 million.

Kenya’s economy contracted by 0.3 percent in 2020 — the first contraction in three decades — but the government has forecast a swing back to growth of about six percent this year.

Kenyatta announced a 25-billion shilling ($225 million, 193 million euro) financial stimulus programme from November 1 “designed to accelerate the pace of our economic growth and to sustain the gains already made”.

He said a variety of sectors would be targeted, including agriculture — long the backbone of the economy — as well as health, education, drought response, infrastructure, energy and environmental conservation.

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