Kenya has imposed a mandatory requirement for all arrivals who must now produce a negative COVID-19 certificate.
The directive was one of the measures announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta Tuesday during a televised address to the nation from State House, Nairobi.
“All persons coming into the country must be in possession of a negative COVID-19 PCR Certificate, acquired no more than 96 hours prior to arrival into the Country; with the PCR Certificate also having been validated under the Trusted Travel platform for those travelling by air,” the president said.
He also extended the night curfew that starts at 10pm to 4am for a further
60 days.
However, the curfew that starts at 7pm to 4 am in the counties of Kisumu, Siaya, Homa-Bay, Migori, Busia, Kakamega, Vihiga, Bungoma, Kisii, Nyamira, Kericho, Bomet, and Trans-Nzoia will continue up to 31st July, 2021;
President has announced his government’s plan to vaccinate 10 million people by the end o 2021 and 26 milion by the end of 2022.
“The second path out of the COVID ‘Fog of War’ for Kenya is an opportunity with a promise. When we reported the first case of COVID-19, more than 15 months ago, the idea of a vaccine was a mirage,” he said.
He said the Ministry of Health is working on a clear National Vaccine Deployment Plan.
“Our strategy was to vaccinate 10 million adults by June 2022 and approximately 16 million by June 2023. 18. But inspired by our ‘Acceleration Doctrine’, which is about constantly increasing the speed of achieving our goals, we revised our Vaccine Deployment Plan,” he said.
Instead of vaccinating 10 million adults by June 2022, he said, “we will vaccinate the entire adult population of 26 million Kenyans by 2022.”
Experts have advised that with the accelerated vaccination, Kenya will have built a capacity to vaccinate 150,000 people every day from August 2021.
Kenya has so far vaccinated 1, 334, 749 million Kenyans against the virus.
“And this accelerated plan will be aided by a few swift actions and bold programmes. For instance, we have ordered 10 million vaccines from Johnson and Johnson, with the first consignment arriving in Kenya in August 2021,” he said.
President Kenyatta said the government had negotiated for a better price for the vaccines and for the price of 10 million vaccines, it has negotiated for them to deliver 13 million vaccines.
“And because the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is administered using a single shot, the speed of rolling out our vaccination programme will be accelerated. Using these vaccines and others in the pipelines, this is how we will vaccinate Over 10 million Kenyans by Christmas 2021 and 26 million by end of 2022. 23. And if a vaccine for under-age populations is registered by early next year, we intend to vaccinate an extra 4 million young adults by June 2022,” he said.
Kenya recorded 719 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday raising infections in the country to 183,603 and 3,621 fatalities.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the new cases were detected from a sample size of 7, 608.
The country’s positivity rate stood at 9.5 per cent by June 29.