Kenya to receive second UK Covid-19 vaccine shipment on Tuesday

 

Kenya will receive the second dose of AstraZeneca vaccines on Tuesday, August 17, 2021.

British High Commissioner Jane Marriott said 407,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines will arrive on Tuesday night.

Kenya has already received 410,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses from the UK, which arrived on July 31.

"Last week I dropped into a surgery in Nairobi to meet the people working to keep safe and those getting their vaccine," Marriott said on Monday.

The shipment will be received by the Ministry of Health officials at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

In his recent tour to the UK, the President secured 817,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines.

The announcement came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson met the President in Britain.

These are part of the first tranche of the UK's commitment to share 100 million vaccine doses internationally by next June.

Through bilateral donations, Kenya expects to receive 1.7 million doses of Pfizer from the US Government.

Also included are 235,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Greece and another 55,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Latvia.

To attain herd immunity the country is supposed to vaccinate at least 60 per cent of the population.

The Health Ministry towards the end of May halted the issuance of the first AstraZeneca dose after experiencing challenges in the supply chain, thus restricting the available doses to giving the second dose to those who had already received the first.

Two weeks ago, President Uhuru Kenyatta said he will fight ‘day and night’ to ensure developing countries are treated equally on vaccine equity.

Uhuru said vaccine nationalism "has really shown how unequal the world is”.

"Where do we get these vaccines from, how are we able to protect our population? This is the fight that's out there,” he said.

Uhuru said this is something that really needs to be looked into.

“Nobody is going to be safe until everybody is safe. We need to come up with a way that there will be vaccine equity,” he said.      BY  THE STAR