NAIROBI, Kenya, May 12- Kenya sad Wednesday it was working with the African Union (AU) to secure 30 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, that will cover at least 60 percent of the country’s adult population.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said once acquired and people are vaccinated, the country will be able to attain sufficient immunity within a year.
Kagwe said the government was also seeking to strike a deal to have some more vaccines from Pfizer.
The Health Cabinet Secretary has assured that the over 900,000 people who have already received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, will get their 2nd dose from the first week of June.
Kenya acquired the initial 1.02 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the Covax facility and is hoping for more, despite delays due to the crisis in India which is experienced the worst infection and death rate fro the pandemic lately.
“Even as we remain hopeful of the shipment of the 2nd dose through the Covax mechanism, we are pursuing other avenues to ensure that this will happen,” Kagwe said.
Statistics released on Wednesday show that Kenya had recorded 22 more deaths from COVID-19 even as 410 cases were detected.
Kagwe said the new deaths raised fatalities in the country to 2,950 as the positivity rate settled at 10.8 percent.
The positivity rate in the country has stabilized on between 3.5 and 10 per cent for the past two weeks, in what experts say offers hope of flattening the curve which had climbed to over 20 per cent in March when a partial lockdown was declared.
The country’s caseload stood at 164,386 on Wednesday with 1,729,345 cumulative tests so far carried out.
Kenya had vaccinated 925,509 people against the disease by May 12.
