State in door-to-door push to vaccinate 14m people against Covid-19
The government testerday kicked off a door-to-door campaign to vaccinate at least 14 million Kenyans against coronavirus in the next two weeks.
New strategy is a joint exercise by the ministries of Health and Interior.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe, while launching the campaign in Dagoretti, Nairobi, said the government seeks to vaccinate at least one million people daily since it started the campaign on Monday. Also present was Interior CS Fred Matiang’i.
As of yesterday, only 706,000 had been vaccinated, well below the targeted four million people in four days. “This time round we are going to vaccinate our people using a different approach,” Kagwe said.
He emotionally narrated how his friend lost his wife because she refused to be vaccinated.
“This is even after spending so much money treating her in various hospitals, Kagwe said.
“We have learnt that when the positivity rate goes down, it comes back with a lot of severity,” he explained.
The latest Covid-19 update put the positivity rate at 1.4 per cent with 93 people testing positive from 6,859 samples tested between Tuesday and Wednesday.
Since the vaccination campaign started in March 2021, a total of 12.9 million vaccines have been administered across the country.
Second dose
“Of these, 6.7 million are partially vaccinated while those fully immunised are 5.9 million,” said Kagwe.
An estimated 131,140 doses have so far been administered to those aged between 15 to 17 years, while 169,340 are booster doses. By yesterday afternoon, 232,166 vaccines were administered in the last 24 hours, while 129,295 people were fully vaccinated during the period in review.
Uptake of the second dose among those who received their first dose, the CS noted, stood at 63.5 percent.
In this regard, Matiang’i called on Kenyans to support officers from the two ministries in order to achieve the target of vaccinating at least 14 million people in the next two weeks.
“The country now has enough vaccine doses. Let us get vaccinated,” he said.
The Interior CS, however, called on law enforcement officers to go about the campaign in a humane manner.
