Kenya is the first African country to receive a COVID-19 vaccine from the United Kingdom.
The article published on “Habari Freshi” website on May 3 indicates that Health Cabinet Secretary (CS) Mutahi Kagwe announced that Kenya had accepted the vaccine developed by a British laboratory., The article says that the CS announced this on May 3, adding that the vaccine will be distributed to all health facilities in Kenya as from May 4., However, the CS did not make such an announcement nor did he make any public address on May 3. Before this date, the CS had addressed the nation on May 1 during the daily COVID-19 update., Subsequent updates from the Ministry of Health were made by chief administrative secretaries Mercy Mwangangi and Rashid Aman, as well as the Health director-general, Patrick Amoth. None of them mentioned receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine from the UK., An official at the Health director-general’s office told PesaCheck in a phone interview that the ministry is not aware of the supposed COVID-19 vaccine from the UK., “As far as we are concerned at the ministry level, we do not have anything of that nature and if we do, it will be formally communicated by the ministry,” he said., The next time CS Mutahi Kagwe addressed the nation was on May 5, when he revealed that the ministry had recorded 45 new cases of COVID-19 over a period of 24 hours — the highest number of positive cases that have been recorded in a day since the virus was first confirmed in Kenya on March 13., The Health ministry’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts, which often update the public on matters concerning COVID-19, have not mentioned receipt of the purported vaccine either., President Uhuru Kenyatta on April 25 said that the government would inform the public once a vaccine has been approved for human trials in Kenya., This came after false reports claimed that researchers from Oxford University are offering Ksh100,000 to Kenyans who are willing to volunteer for COVID-19 vaccine trials., PesaCheck has looked into the claim that Kenya is the first African country to accept a vaccine from a laboratory in the UK and finds it to be FALSE., This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms., By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds., Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content., This fact-check was written by Fact-Checker Linda Ngari and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Enock Nyariki., The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi., PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org., PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local media and other civic watchdog organisations in 14 African countries., Written by, Written by
FALSE: Kenya has not received a COVID-19 vaccine from the UK