Kenya receives 1 million vaccine doses

Kenya received 1 million Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday, the first East African nation to get a shipment of the vaccines. The Ministry of Health said it would set aside 400,000 coronavirus jabs for the country's medical workers.

With fewer resources and tougher logistics than other regions, African nations are racing to secure the doses needed to protect their roughly 1.3 billion people and allow the safe reopening of economies.

Kenya's batch, which arrived on a Qatar Airways passenger flight, is the first of an initial allocation of 3.56 million doses by the COVAX facility, a global initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines led by the Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organization.

Speaking to journalists after receiving the vaccines at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Mutahi Kagwe, Kenya's health minister, assured the country there will be more medicine arriving and there was no need to fear.  

"This is only the first arrival, there will be more vaccines coming through and therefore, we don't want anybody to panic and to think that they are not going to get vaccinated," Kagwe said. 

"The second thing is that it's a voluntary thing, it's not a mandatory vaccination. People who want to be vaccinated will be vaccinated and we hope it will be a majority of the people," he added.

Kagwe said that among the first to receive the dose will be healthcare workers, followed by other frontline workers, such as the police and teachers. Next in line will be Kenyans with underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable to coronavirus.

Kenya recorded its first case of coronavirus in March last year.  So far, more than 100,000 people have contracted the virus and at least 1,000 have died.  The East African nation still has a nighttime curfew in place and banned public gatherings to limit the virus's spread. 

On the other hand, Senegal, which received 200,000 doses developed by China's Sinopharm in February, got an additional 324,000 shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday through the COVAX facility.

In Kigali, officials said Rwanda will get the first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 shots to be dispatched to Africa under the vaccine-sharing plan. The Pfizer vaccine presents an extra logistical challenge because it requires ultra-cold storage.

Rwanda plans to start its vaccination drive on Friday, prioritizing front-line health workers and others at high risk. It hopes to vaccinate 30 percent of its roughly 12 million people before the end of 2021.

Despite Africa's comparatively low fatalities, fragile economies across the continent are reeling from lockdowns.