Kenya to get more Covid jab doses amid AstraZeneca safety fears
A nurse administers the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in Kakamega. The Ministry of Health has revealed that Kenya expects to receive a second batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses.
The Ministry of Health has revealed that Kenya expects to receive a second batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses despite the jab being suspended wholly or in part in at least seven European countries and in DRC Congo over safety concerns.
This comes after Denmark, Norway, Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Luxembourg linked blood clots in some recipients to the vaccine.
The Kenyan consignment will be delivered by Gavi-Covax, the Vaccine Alliance, an organisation appointed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to oversee procurement, allotment and distribution of Covid-19 vaccine doses to 92 countries that have signed up for the Covax facility
Speaking to the Nation, Dr Willis Akhwale, Kenya's vaccine taskforce chairperson, said that they have already distributed 492,000 doses to cater for health workers.
"The next shipment will be here latest by the first week of April but between now and May we expect the second batch of 2.5 million doses," he said.
Availability challenge
Asked why only the AstraZeneca vaccine is being delivered, Dr Akhwale said the main challenge is availability.
"Gavi does projections and the country chooses, Pfizer and Moderna have been having limited doses but if they become readily available we will pick them. As per the last projection, AstraZeneca was the most readily available," Dr Akhwale explained.
He reminded Kenyans that suspension is not the same as stopping the use of the vaccine.
"The AstraZeneca vaccine being used in Europe was not made by Serum Institute of India. If we were sharing batch numbers we would also stop it," he said.
Dr Akhwale said it is encouraging to see that MoH managed to hit 9,144 vaccinations in week one which began on March 8.
Quality vaccinations
"We have now approved 622 sites to be open from next week upon people being trained. Our aim is to reach 15,000 quality vaccinations daily. We will start slowly but maintain quality, and we are not in a rush," he said.
The taskforce plans to achieve 1.2 million vaccinations in three months.
“The data reflecting 9,144 nationwide vaccinations is from 40 counties reporting and we did 2,000 a day which is a good start considering week one was about planning and logistics," he disclosed.
On Friday, WHO, in an official briefing, said that the Covax facility had so far delivered almost 29 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to 38 countries.
"Globally, 335 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered to 144 economies, 76 per cent of those are in ten countries," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
