KENYA – Kenya’s Covid-19 positivity rate has shot up to 18 percent as 1,006 new infections are recorded following analysis of 5,584 samples over the past 24 hours.
Kenya’s positivity rate has been above 10 percent for the last few days, standing at 13.9 percent on Saturday, 12.2 percent on Sunday and 13.5 percent on Monday and 14.7 percent on Tuesday.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the number of confirmed infections, since the first one last March, rose to 199,941 while the number of tests carried out so far stood at 2,109,581.
Of the new patients, 966 were Kenyans and 40 foreigners, 521 female and 485 males, the youngest a three-week-old baby and the oldest 93.
Nairobi County accounted for 391 of the new patients, Kiambu 121, Kilifi 87, Kajiado 56, Mombasa 46 and Nakuru at 42, with these counties accounting for the bulk of cases.
Health Cabinet Secretary, Mutahi Kagwe, also announced 261 more recoveries, 33 of them under home-based care and 228 in hospitals countrywide, raising the count to 187,824.
The CS further noted that 13 more patients have succumbed to the virus, but explained that these were all late reports confirmed after the audit of facility records in March, June and July. This raised the death toll to 3,895.
Kenya’s battle against Covid-19 is set for a boost with the expected arrival of more vaccine doses over the next few days.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe says the vaccine doses will start arriving in the country beginning next week in a boost to the ongoing vaccination campaign that has seen 1,692,793 of the 1,733,100 AstraZeneca doses received in the country administered.
“Kenya will receive 1,760,000 doses of Pfizer from the US government, 410,000 doses of AstraZeneca from the UK government, 235,000 doses of Astrazeneca from Greece and 55,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Lativia as part of bilateral donations,” CS Kagwe.
The Covax facility has also allocated Kenya 407,040 doses of AstraZeneca and 271,440 doses of Pfizer. This besides the 13 million doses of Johnson and Johnson, procured by the government through the AVAT-AU mechanism, whose delivery will start next month.
Kenya will also be receiving 15 Ultra cold chain freezers from the UPS Foundation valued at 15 million shillings within the next two weeks, in preparation for the Pfizer vaccines.
This far, a total of 1,692,793 vaccine doses have been administered across the country, 1,052,343 being first doses and 640,452 second doses.
The uptake rate of the second dose was 60.9 percent while the proportion of fully vaccinated adults was 2.35 percent.
In neighboring country Tanzania, President Samia Suluhu today launched the national Covid-19 vaccination drive, as she also got immunized with the J&J vaccine.
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