Six months left before consignment of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine expires

The country has just 6 months left before a consignment of thawed Johnson and Johnson vaccine expires.

This coming at a time when the Ministry of Health and a number of health officials in the counties are lamenting low COVID-19 vaccination rates since the review of regulations in March.

The thawed Johnson and Johnson vaccines were to expire in April, before the Poisons and Pharmacy Board (PPB) approved the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation to extend its shelf life.

The decision by the PPB appears to have saved the country from recording another loss of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines through expiry.

Dr. Kibet Sirgen, an Epidemiologist, Vaccine & Immunisation, at WHO Kenya said: “In March this year WHO issued s recommendation, a positive one, to extend the shelf life of the vaccine at storage of 2-8 degrees from previous recommendation of 4 and a half months to 11 months, so that gives an additional about 6 and a half months.”

“But the shelf life of frozen vaccine at -15 to -25 degrees still remains 24 months for the J&J vaccine.”

In March, when the Ministry of Health was announcing the loss of at least 800,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, it also had raised an alarm over at least 1 million doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccine that were to expire by April 15.

The concern at the time was low vaccination rates, and despite PPB’s decision, that concern still remains, with the ministry saying that achieving 10,000 vaccinations in a day countrywide, has been quite a struggle.

Bogomba Chacha, a healthcare worker in Migori said: “In the recent past we have been doing well, but for the last two months the numbers are going down, most people are not willing to take up the vaccine…because initially we were at around 60 per cent but now I think we’re way below 20 per cent, very few are coming.”

James Oguk, the health promotion officer, Migori stated: “As at now we have so many people who have taken dose one and are supposed to come for dose two, but now we consider them as defaulters.”

The Nakuru County health department has similar experience; a total of 8,031 defaulters recorded by May 6. In Kajiado, Kirinyaga and Nandi counties, the situation is very much the same.

Vaccine apathy is however not a Kenya only affair, as a number of countries have recorded hesitancy among their populations in taking the vaccine as the number of COVID-19 infections continues to decline.

Additionally, AstraZeneca, which on April 29 warned about a global supply glut, struggled to compete with Pfizer and Moderna owing to its vaccine's relatively limited shelf life.

This comes even as reports regarding the safety of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine continue to mount after the Food and Drug administration in the United States Of America imposed new restrictions on use of the vaccine, stating that the risk of a rare and life-threatening blood clot syndrome outweighed the benefits of the vaccine.

In Kenya, the Ministry of Health says it will continue targeting categorised groups to increase vaccination rates; that will work towards achieving the target of 19 million people fully vaccinated by June.