About 33 per cent of residents who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 live in Nairobi, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe (pictured) has said.
As of Wednesday (April 6), 339,893 residents had received the AstraZeneca jab, the CS said in a statement to newsrooms today. Those who took the Sputnik V vaccine number 228.
After Nairobi, the top counties with a high uptake of vaccines are Nakuru (seven per cent) and Uasin Gishu (six per cent).
According to the CS, the Lamu county vaccine uptake has remained low since the exercise rolled out. Only 248 people have been vaccinated in the county.
This comes as 1,523 people tested positive for Covid-19 in Kenya in the last 24 hours, pushing the national caseload to 141,365.
The cases were from a sample size of 7,423, posting a positivity rate of 20.5 per cent. From the new cases, 1,432 are Kenyans while 91 are foreigners. Men numbered 842 against 681 women who tested positive for Covid-19 in the last 24 hours.
The youngest in the pool of positive cases in Kenya today was a three-month-old child while the oldest was aged 105.
Kenya's cumulative tests now stand at 1,530,736.
According to the Health ministry, Nairobi's cases in the last 24 hours were 626 followed by Kiambu )142), Uasin Gishu (108), Nakuru (92) and Mombasa (65) among others.
The country's recoveries went up by 616, pushing the national tally to 97,194.
Meanwhile, the total deaths moved to 2,276 after 18 patients succumbed to Covid-19.
Since Covid was reported in the country in March last year, 1,085 of the total deaths were from patients aged 60 years and above. Seventeen of the cases were from patients aged between 10-19, the least fatalities in a given age bracket.
In the last 24 hours, the ministry reported that 1,591 patients are admitted in various health facilities, 236 of them in the ICU.
Meanwhile, the arrival of 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca – Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in Kenya on March 2 marked a milestone in the wake of dealing with the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The government last week confirmed that more than 800,000 doses had been dispatched for vaccination countrywide.
The trend has been witnessed in several other counties. In Marsabit, only 255 people have received the vaccine, while Tana River and Mandera account for 451 and 485 respectively. Isiolo has vaccinated 559 people, Kwale 640, Turkana 738, Makueni 745, Nyamira 855, and Taita Taveta 901.
The low numbers have been blamed on distribution in terms of facilities, with the common factor among these 10 counties being the distance between facilities. For instance, counties like Isiolo, Mandera and Marsabit rely on Garissa County for vaccination, as it hosts the regional store for the jab. Others include the low number of doses received by these counties.
