The fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in Kenya received a major boost on Thursday after the country received 182, 400 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines.
The vaccines were donated by the French government to the Covax facility. They landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Thursday morning.
The vaccines were received by senior government officials led by Chairperson of COVID Vaccine Deployment Taskforce Dr Willis Akhwale, French Political Counselor Emmanuel Dagron and UNICEF Representative Maniza Zaman.
The vaccines came at a time Kenya is grappling with a shortage of the Covid-19 vaccines occasioned by the Indian ban on the export of AstraZeneca to combat the disease within her territory.
“The Kenyan Government is very grateful to the Government of France for this generous donation, which will support our national COVID-19 vaccination campaign. We have recently embarked on vaccinating our people for the second dose, so this comes at a critical time,” said Dr Akhwale.
On his side, French Counselor Dagron said France, European Union and Covax will work closely with Kenya to eradicate the deadly virus in the East African nation.
“We hope that these 182 400 doses of vaccine will help to give access to a second dose to many at-risk Kenyans. President Macron has pledged to give 60 million doses of vaccine to countries in need around the world, including Kenya, before the end of 2021. By the end of June, 2.6 million doses have already,” he said.
By July 7 Kenya had vaccinated a total of 1,511,693 people. The vaccination exercise kicked in March this year.
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