By XINHUA
Kenya has surpassed its COVID-19 vaccination target for health workers as thousands of the employees heeded the call to take the jabs, the Ministry of Health said in an update released on Monday.
The ministry noted that 237,173 health workers in the East African nation were fully vaccinated against a target of 208,418, representing a vaccination rate of 114 percent.
The health workers, mainly doctors, nurses and other clinical officers, top the list of those who are fully vaccinated among frontline workers and priority groups.
In November last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) observed that only one in every four African health workers were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving the bulk of the workforce on the frontlines unprotected. But Kenya has overcome this.
The country launched its COVID-19 vaccination in March 2021 after receiving 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Since then, the East African nation has received 25 million vaccine doses from Moderna, Pfizer, Sinopharm, Johnson & Johnson as well as AstraZeneca.
Kenya has about 60,000 nurses, 13,000 doctors, more than 20,000 clinical officers, as well 15,000 lab technologists, according to the Ministry of Health.
Kenya has so far administered 12.1 million people, of whom, 6.5 million are partially vaccinated.
Kenya plans to fully vaccinate 19 million adults (70 percent of the adult population) by the end of June.
