Sorry, no Covid vaccine this month

The wait for the Covid-19 vaccine in Kenya might be longer after the regulator charged with overseeing vaccine authorisation in the European Union said it was unlikely to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab in January as expected.

The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which has already been approved in Britain, is unlikely to get the green light in the European Union, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced.

The agency said the approval will take some time.

“The company has not provided the necessary scientific information related to safety, quality and efficacy of the vaccine,” EMA said in a statement, adding that they expect further information from the ongoing clinical trials from January.

he AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is currently undergoing a “rolling review”, which allows the EMA to examine safety and efficacy data as they are released, even before a formal application for authorisation is filed by the manufacturer.

With the push for the approval from January, it means that many countries in the EU will have to wait until the approval is given, putting a temporary stop to the country’s expectation of vaccinating 1.4 million people by June.

Lengthy trials

The first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine trial that is being conducted in the country by Kemri-Wellcome Trust, Kilifi in collaboration with Oxford University, was administered in the UK early this week.

In Kenya, close to 400 participants had been chosen to participate in the trials that started two months ago, and which are expected to run for 24 months.

The vaccine, which is being tried in only two African countries, Kenya and South Africa and has proven to be safe in the UK, is the only hope for Kenyans since it is cheaper and easier to store and distribute compared to the others.

It is estimated that the first batch of the recipients will cover 20 per cent of the country’s population.

This is even as the country continues to register a decline in the number of deaths and cases of Covid-19. Yesterday, 64 people tested positive from a sample size of 1,852, bringing the number of confirmed cases to 96,678 from a cumulative sample of 1,052,836.

However, the number of patients admitted to hospitals continues to rise, with about 657 patients in various facilities and 2,989 in home-based isolation. Out of this, 42 are critically ill and in need of oxygen and supplements to survive.

Four patients succumbed to the virus on Saturday, bringing the total to 1,685 fatalities.

Priority groups

On Saturday, Health Cabinet Secretary told Kenyans that the country is hoping to receive the vaccine by the second week of February, retracting his earlier announcement where the ministry had promised to have acquired the vaccine by January.

Mr Kagwe said the priority groups likely to receive the jab first will be health care workers, police, teachers and students.

The ministry has also changed tack and it says it will be open to acquire other approved vaccines to add on the Oxford University and AstraZeneca vaccine whose clinical trials were done in Kenya sometime last year.

“We are negotiating with other companies whose vaccines have been approved such as Sinopharm’s vaccine and Pfizer’s,” Mr Kagwe said.

Mr Kagwe said the country had earlier opted for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine because of its fair price and easy storage.