Vaccines roll-out from national storage to counties starts

 

The government plans to vaccinate at least one million people using the first batch of doses that came into the country on Tuesday night.

The initial plan was to vaccinate 500,000 with the first dose and the second dose eight weeks later.

But the Health Ministry now says with plans underway to secure the second batch of vaccines in the next three to four weeks with the assurance that there will be a stock to give the booster jab as it is required.

The first consignment of the vaccines arrived in Nairobi aboard Qatar Airways flight QR1341 and was received by senior government officials led by the Health CS Mutahi Kagwe, Unicef Representative to Kenya Maniza Zaman and World Health Organisation Representative to Kenya Dr Rudi Eggers.

Taskforce on Vaccine Deployment and Vaccination chairman Dr Willis Akhwale on Wednesday said the process of repacking vaccines was ongoing with the official flag-off to the counties expected to be done on Thursday.

“Today it was the packaging, then they will be flagged off. You have to open them and repack them in small quantities. These things are packaged in quantities of 3,000 depending on how many health workers are in a place and they have to be packaged in specialized packages,” Akhwale said.

He added: ”After packaging tomorrow Nairobi can get so if they want to start vaccinating tomorrow or Friday they can do.”

The first consignment of 1.02 million doses is part of an initial allocation to Kenya of 3.56 million doses.

In addition, Unicef is providing 1,025,000 syringes and 10,250 safety boxes to Kenya, via a global stockpile funded and supported by Gavi.

However, Kenya already has enough in-country stocks of syringes and safety boxes for the first phase of vaccinations.

“The war has changed. We have been fighting Covid-19 but we have been fighting it with rubber bullets. But this time around what we have received here is equivalent metaphorically speaking to the acquisition of machine guns, bazookas and tanks to fight this war against Covid-19,” Kagwe said while receiving the vaccines at JKIA.

He however maintained that the vaccination will not be mandatory, adding that the hope is that Kenyans come out in large numbers to take the vaccine.

According to WHO, Kenya needs to vaccinate a third of her population in order for Kenyans to develop herd immunity.

The government plans to use level 4, 5 and 6 healthcare facilities as they usually have adequate numbers of healthcare workers.

The government had announced plans to build the capacity of more than 23,000 healthcare workers including 8,000 health volunteers in areas of vaccine administration, logistics management, data capture and monitoring.

“The process will also involve the counties so that we are not just sticking to Nairobi. The vaccine is not going to be a Nairobi affair so starting tomorrow we are moving into the counties  and therefore it is going to be happening across the counties  and across the entire country among health workers.”

The government plans to reach at least 1.25 million Kenyans with the Covid-19 between February and June.

During this period, frontline healthcare workers, all staff working in health facilities and workers offering essential services will be inoculated with priority given to sectors such as security.

The second phase is expected to run from July 2021 to June 2022 during which 9.7 million more Kenyans will receive the jab depending on the availability of the vaccines.

The target population in this phase will be Kenyans aged above 50 years and those above 18 years of age with underlying health conditions.

Covax is part of the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a ground-breaking global collaboration to accelerate development, production, and equitable access to tests, treatments, and vaccines.

Covax has built a diverse portfolio of vaccines suitable for a range of settings and populations and is on track to meet its goal of delivering at least 2 billion doses of vaccine to participating countries around the globe in 2021.

This includes at least 1.3 billion donor-funded doses to the 92 lower-income Covax Facility participants supported by the Gavi Covax AMC.  BY THE STAR