Kenya receives $130M from World Bank for coronavirus vaccines

By Andrew Wasike

NAIROBI, Kenya (AA) - The World Bank announced Tuesday that it has given Kenya 14 billion shillings ($130 million) to help it procure coronavirus vaccines.

“This additional financing will enable Kenya to procure more vaccines via the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) initiative and the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facilities,” according to the World Bank.

World Bank Country Director for Kenya Keith Hansen said the funds will also support the deployment of vaccines by boosting Kenya’s cold chain storage capacity, including establishing 25 county vaccine stores, strengthening the capacity of 36 sub-county stores and equipping 1,177 health facilities with vaccine storage equipment.

“This additional financing comes at a critical time when the Government of Kenya is making concerted efforts to contain the rising cases of COVID-19 infections and accelerate the deployment of vaccines to a wider population,” said Hansen.

-Surge in western region

President Uhuru Kenyatta announced Tuesday in a presidential address that Western Kenya had a surge of infections, noting that “out of every five positive cases in Kenya a fortnight-ago, two were from the western region.”

He announced that Kenya ordered the Johnson and Johnson vaccine and instead of vaccinating 10 million adults by June 2022 as planned, the country will vaccinate the entire adult population of 26 million by 2022.

“We have ordered 10 million vaccines from Johnson and Johnson, with the first consignment arriving in Kenya in August 2021. But in the process of negotiating with this company, we managed to get a lower price. For the price of 10 million vaccines, we have negotiated for them to deliver 13 million vaccines,” he said.

A total of 719 people tested positive for the virus Tuesday from a sample of 7,608 tested in the last 24 hours. The positivity rate is now 9.5%. Total confirmed cases are now 183,603 and cumulative tests conducted are 1,953,344.

Nine patients have succumbed to the disease, all being late deaths reported after conducting facility record audits on diverse dates in October and December 2020 and April and June 2021.