Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has reportedly asked the country’s Ministry of Health to look to China for Covid-19 vaccines.
The country by this move is extending options for a Covid-19 vaccine to inoculate its citizens. According to The Star, “until now, Kenya was waiting for a vaccine to be delivered through the Covax facility, a WHO-led project working largely with Western manufacturers. However, there is growing frustration because most of the Western manufacturers have already sold billions of doses to rich countries in advance. This means Kenya will not gain full access to affordable vaccines until after the rich world has vaccinated its people, probably past 2022.”
“While Kemri continues to collaborate with AstraZeneca and Oxford University in the trials for this vaccine, the government remains open to other collaborative opportunities…In this regard, Kemri will collaborate with researchers from other countries such as South Korea, India, Singapore, and China,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said. The decision also welcomes the testing of a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine in Kenya.
The decision was also made because the toll of coronavirus in Kenya is worsening. “Covid-19 seems to be making a comeback with a vengeance and for us in Kenya, the cases in the counties seem to be growing,” Kagwe said.
A CTGN news article by Tom Fowdy reports that “Kenya is turning to China because it recognizes that the West is ultimately unreliable and that Beijing will offer an affordable, economic and practical solution to getting the country back on track. Many more will follow.”
Morocco has reportedly become the first African country to procure vaccines from China and as clinical trials for CanSino, Sinopharm and Sinovac candidates come to the completion, hundreds of millions are expected to be donating to various countries across the developing world, as well as through the COVAX program.
As far as the solution to Covid-19 is concerned, China is said to be ensuring that Africa is not being left behind and is not being forced to linger with COVID-19 and economic depletion whilst Western countries clean up their own houses and cater to the profits of big pharmacy firms. Britain has become the first Western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine for general use as it announced a rollout of Pfizer-BioNTech’s drug in the second week of December.
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