Kenya has ordered 24 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, enough to cover 20 percent of the country’s population, through a request made to Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
The doses are set to cost the country 10 billion shillings, which translates to about 320 shillings per dose. The cost is heavily discounted through donations the country has received from partners like the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
According to the acting director-general of Health, Patrick Amoth, the first to be vaccinated will be frontline workers, then the vulnerable and the elderly.
He said that Kenya did not dictate which vaccine to receive because Gavi has signed agreements with manufacturers of about nine vaccine candidates.
“The Oxford University-Astrazeneca candidate will be ideal for Kenya because it fits within our cold chain supply system. It can be stored in 2-8 degrees and we have refrigerators for that, it is also being tested in the country in Kilifi” Amoth said
Pfizer- BioNTech’s, Moderna’s and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines have all reported efficacy of more than 90 percent. However, the first two require ultra-cold storage not widely available in Kenya.
The Pfizer candidate is also not among the contracted vaccines that will be supplied to poor countries through Gavi. Kenya expects to receive a vaccine early next year, but Amoth did not specify the time frame.
He said Kenya will grant emergency use approval to the appropriate candidate immediately that the vaccine gets such approvals in Europe and the US.
On Monday 14th, the Ministry of Health announced that 163 people tested positive for COVID-19 from a sample size of 2,283 tested in the last 24 hours, bringing to 92,055 the number of confirmed infections in the country
Of the cases, 156 are Kenyans while 7 are foreigners; 84 are males and 79 females while the youngest is a one-year-old infant and the oldest is 88.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe, said 424 patients recovered from the coronavirus,378 from the Home Based Care Program while 46 were discharged from various hospitals, taking total recoveries to 73,452
CS Kagwe however noted that 6 patients also succumbed to the disease, bringing the cumulative fatalities to 1,593. Last week on Thursday, Uganda’s Ministry of Health said it ordered nine million doses to cover 20 percent of the country’s population of 43 million people.