Kenya settles on Oxford vaccine, jabs begin early 2021
The government has assured Kenyans vaccination against the Covid-19 will start early next year.
The announcement came as Covid-19 death toll in the country hit 1,639 on Sunday after six more patients succumbed to the disease.
Kenya has settled for the Oxford Vaccine because it can be stored easily, with the Ministry of Health saying it will be one of the frontline vaccines that will be used in the country.
Clinical trials for the vaccines are still going on at Kilifi Kemri Wellcome Trust, with the teams in charge saying the initial data has shown good results.
“The kind of vaccine that we are looking for will have four parameters. It should be a vector carrier, WHO pre-qualified, cost-effective and one that fits within our existing cooling system of 2 to 8 degrees," acting Health director general Patrick Amoth said.
The government will then invest Sh10 billion to buy an additional 12 million doses to cover 10 per cent of the population.
The first beneficiaries of the vaccine will be the 430,000 frontline health workers, in both public and private facilities representing one per cent of the total population.
In a statement on Sunday, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe confirmed that 349 more people had tested positive for Covid-19 from a sample size of 5,025 tested in 24 hours.
This raises the virus caseload in the country to 94,500 from a cumulative samples of 1,008,518 conducted since March.
All the new cases were Kenyans except 15 who were foreign nationals comprising of 230 men and 119 women aged between 11 months and 98 years.
“Currently, there are 831 patients admitted in various health facilities countrywide with 5,834 are on the home based isolation and care. Fifty two patients are in the intensive care unit, 25 of whom are on ventilator support and 24 on supplemental oxygen,” Kagwe said.
Three more patient are under observation.
“Another 28 patients are separately on supplemental oxygen out of whom 23 are in the general wards while five are in the high dependency unit,” he added.
Similarly, 176 patients recovered from the disease, raising the number of recoveries to 75,735.
From the number, 155 were from the home based care programme while 21 were discharged from various hospitals across the country.
In terms of distributin of cases per county, Nairobi recorded 156 cases followed by Nyeri with 34, Kirinyaga with 30, Meru with 27, Uasin Gishu with 25, Mombasa with 17, Kiambu with 15, Busia 13 and Nandi seven cases.
Murang’a recorded six more cases, Nyandarua four, Machakos three, Garissa, Kisii and Trans Nzoia had two cases each while Tharaka Nithi, Turkana, Kajiado, Nakuru, Embu and Laikipia each recorded one case.

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