NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 10- Civil servants in Kenya have 13 days to be vaccinated against COVID-19 disease, or face a disciplinary measure. This means they have until next week on Monday to get the jab.
This is according to a memo issued by the Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua, who pointed out that there was low uptake of the vaccine among government workers.
It is a move that is likely to elicit reactions and more so from right defenders- on the right of a person to have it or not, and whether one should be punished for their choice.
In the memo seen by Shahidi News, Kinyua said all civil servants will be prioritized in the next phase of vaccination exercise.
The low uptake according to Kinyua is mostly within members of discipline forces and teachers.
Some public servants, Kinyua said, “have deliberately avoided getting vaccinated” so that they can stay away from work under the guise of working from home.
It is a move that he said has affected service delivery to the public.
“This has negatively affected service delivery to the public,” he said in a memo dated August 5 to the Principal Secretaries and accounting officers.
Kinyua said the revelations of the low vaccine uptake were made during a National Security Advisory Committee meeting.
The low uptake is attributed to skepticism among some Kenyans including government workers about the coronavirus vaccines, which has affected the general uptake of the same.
Efforts to debunk the myths around the vaccines have bore fruits, though not entirely.
The country has received more vaccines to help in pushing the vaccination programme, with more centres having been opened for the exercise.
A total of 1,804,375 vaccines have so far been administered across the country. Of these, total first doses are 1,105,470 while second doses are 698,905.
The Ministry of Health says the uptake of the second dose among those who received their first dose was by Monday at 63.2 percent with the majority being males at 55 percent while females are at 45 percent. Proportion of adults fully vaccinated is 2.6 percent.
The uptake of the second dose by priority groups include those aged 58 years and above 214,722, others 205,802, health workers 120,155, teachers 102,007, while security officers are at 56,219.
Some 30 patients succumbed to the disease three of them having occurred in the last 24 hours while 27 are late deaths reported after conducting facility record audits on April, May June, July and August 2021.
This pushed the cumulative fatalities to 4,749.
Last week, Kenya received some 182,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the Greek government in what raised the number of vaccines received in the country so far to 2,323,100.
The government expects more vaccine doses to boost the ongoing vaccination campaign targeting 10 million people by December 2021.
The African Union on August 8 announced the start of monthly shipments of vaccines acquired by the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) to the AU member states.
The AVAT had signed the historic agreement for the purchase of 220 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson single shot Covid-19 Vaccine, with the potential to order an additional 180 million doses.
The first monthly shipments will arrive in several member states, and shipments will continue for a total of 6.4 million doses shipped this month.
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