President Uhuru Kenyatta has secured more than 817,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, the UK government announced on Wednesday.

UK government said the vaccines will help Kenya, with a population of 52 million - to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic.

An initial batch of 400,000 doses is expected to dispatched to Nairobi later this week as Kenya heightens her efforts to contain the virus as promised by President Kenyatta.

This comes as most African countries have been grappling with a shortage of Covid-19 vaccines resulting in their efforts to contain the virus through vaccination programmes hitting a snag.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said about 9 million Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs are expected to be sent through COVAX for distribution to third world countries.

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He added that the UK government had undertaken to share 100 million doses globally by June 2022 amid concerns that wealthy nations were hoarding the vaccines from poor nations.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on Wednesday evening expected to meet Uhuru at Chequers before they co-host the Global Education Summit (GPE) in London on Thursday.

The bilateral talks between Boris and Uhuru are expected to touch on defence, trade, development and the fight against Covid-19.

This comes a month after President Kenyatta announced that Kenya would receive its first batch of 13 million Coronavirus jabs from Johnson & Johnson in August.

According to the Head of State, the new vaccine shots would more than double Kenya’s initial goal of vaccinating 10 million people by mid 2022.

"We will vaccinate the entire adult population of 26 million Kenyans by 2022," Uhuru said then.

He added that the single-shot Johnson and Johnson would help hasten the national vaccination rollout programme, with 150,000 doses expected to be administered each day from August.