Nairobi gets 72,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine
Nairobi County has been allocated 72,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) Director-General Mohamed Badi has announced.
This was disclosed on Tuesday during the launch of the Coronavirus vaccination exercise across the county in a ceremony held at the Mutuini Hospital in Dagoretti.
According to General Badi, Nairobi had recorded the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths since the onset of the pandemic, thus priority will be given to healthcare workers and those living with underlying health conditions.
“Nairobi accounts for 44 percent of all the cases recorded and has registered 681 deaths so far and therefore we are planning to move with speed to ensure that all the healthcare workers are vaccinated and in phase two we move to the vulnerable and those living with underlying conditions,” Badi said.
The vaccination exercise is expected to be undertaken in three phases.
“We are currently implementing Phase 1 where our target will be health care workers, Community Health Volunteers and facility support staff, who are our front-line workers,” he said.
NMS is targeting to inoculate more than 5,000 health care workers (HCW) in the public sector, 22,496 in the private sector and additional 7,300 community health volunteers.
“We want to ensure that everyone is vaccinated in the long run because as we all know anybody can contract it and the effects are bad,” he added.
Last week, Kenya received its first consignment of 1.02 million doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford Covid-19 vaccine from the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access initiative (Covax).
The doses are part of an initial allocation of 3.56 million shots.
Kenya hopes to vaccinate about 16 million people by end of the year to suppress the virus.
Phase 1 will run until June 30 giving way for Phase 2 which is targeting about 9.6 million Kenyans.
The next batch of vaccines is, however, expected in the country by the end of March or April, with phase two of the vaccination set to kick off in July and 9.7 million Kenyans expected to be vaccinated.
NMS Health Services Director Josephine Kibaru-Mbae said the vaccination will take place in both public and private health facilities.
Among hospitals to get the jabs are Kenyatta National Hospital, Mathari Hospital, Memorial Hospital, Moi Airbase Hospital, National Spinal Injury Hospital and Kenyatta University Teaching and Referral Hospital.
Some of the private and faith-based health facilities selected include Aga Khan Hospital, St. Francis Community Hospital, Jamaa Mission Hospital, Coptic Hospital, Nairobi Hospital, Ruaraka Uhai Neema Hospital and Mater Hospital.
On Tuesday, Covid-19 claimed seven lives, raising the cumulative fatalities to 1,886, with
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe saying 113 other patients recovered from the virus.
Total recoveries stood at 87,736 as 479 new Covid-19 cases were confirmed out of 4,043 samples tested.