Kenya receives the first batch of Moderna vaccines

On August 23, 2021, Kenya received a consignment of more than 880,000 (eight hundred eighty thousand) doses of Moderna vaccine against the COVID-19 virus. The vaccines were donated by the United States (U.S.) government through the COVAX facility, a worldwide initiative ensuring equal access to COVID-19 vaccines across the globe and were handed over to the Ministry of Health of Kenya at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in the country’s capital of Nairobi. 

More than 2 million additional vaccine doses against the COVID-19 virus are scheduled to be delivered to Kenya by the U.S. government within the next month. The donation will be used to facilitate the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination campaign, which began in March 2021. As of August 23, 2021, Kenya has administered around 2.4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, mainly AstraZeneca, enough to inoculate 2.9 percent of the country’s adult population has been vaccinated. Before the end of the year, the government of Kenya plans to vaccinate 10 million people out of its 55.1 million population (2021). 

During the handover ceremony at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Kenya, Susan Mochache, thanked the government of the United States, as well as the governments of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece, and France for their generous vaccine donations throughout the past six months, and expressed her hopes for their further support of Kenya’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign. 

Principal Secretary Mochache also announced the decision to reform Kenya’s COVID-19 vaccination centers by allocating one vaccine type to each vaccination center. This reform will allow the centers to avoid a cross mix of vaccines and enable people to choose a specific center based on the vaccine it offers. 

In turn, Eric William Kneedler, the Charge d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, emphasized his government’s commitment to assist Kenya in conducting its COVID-19 vaccination campaign, demonstrating a solid partnership between the two states. 

For more information, please see https://www.health.go.ke/kenya-ramps-up-vaccination-efforts-as-880460-doses-of-moderna-covid-19-vaccines-arrive/