Kenya's fight against COVID-19 received a major boost on Thursday evening with the arrival of 504,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

With the arrival of the latest doses, the East African country has now received a total of 8,006,820 doses of vaccines for its population of 52.6 million people.

Kenya rolled out its mass vaccination exercise in March 2021, initially targeting persons considered to be at high risk, including the elderly, people with underlying health conditions and healthcare workers.

By Friday, the country has administered a total of  4,826,129 doses of vaccines, with the number of fully vaccinated persons standing at 1,368,290.

Kenya aims to vaccinate 10 million people by December and 26 million by the end of 2022.

So far, the health ministry has recorded 252,499 confirmed COVID-19 infections with 5,249 fatalities.