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Unvaccinated COVID patients filling up Kenya hospitals
Kenya is dealing with another outbreak of COVID-19 with health officials urging all residents to get vaccinated “urgently”
Kenya’s Ministry of Health confirmed on Sunday that 646 people tested positive for COVID-19 after 6,039 got tested in a 24 hour period.
The positivity rate is 10.7%, with total confirmed positive cases rising to 229,009 and cumulative tests so far conducted sitting at 2,312,027.
Health authorities say while many cases are recovering from the virus, hospitalisations are rising, with the majority of them unvaccinated.
Kenya received just over one million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine as part of the COVAX rollout
The nation has now completed part one of its vaccine rollout.
Speaking in Nairobi following the first roll-out of vaccinations, the Health Ministry’s COVID-19 vaccine taskforce chairman, Dr Willis Akhwale, says that the 1.12 million doses is part of an initial allocation to Kenya of 3.56 million doses.
“In Kenya, we had identified frontline health workers, teachers, police and military as the priority groups which would be targeted during round one of the inoculations. However, with time, we also included those aged 58 years and above in this priority category
Additional 407,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses arrive in Kenya, donated by the UK
The country also recently received an additional 407,000 doses of the AstraZeneca jab which was donated by the British Government.
The vaccines arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, in Nairobi on August 17.
The additional vaccinations brings the total number of vaccines donated recently to Kenya by the United Kingdom to 817,000 doses.