This archive report was first published on 13 July 2020.
Published on July 13, 2020, by VeraH Okeyo
Kenya is back to square one in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, with five counties experiencing a significant increase in new coronavirus cases.
According to data compiled by the Nation, Kiambu, Machakos, Kajiado, and Nakuru are among the counties with the biggest increases. Kiambu, for instance, saw a 60 percent increase in cases between July 1 and July 6, with the county recording 125 cases. This number shot to 207 from July 6 to yesterday.
Health CS Kagwe has expressed concern over the surge in cases, stating: “In the past few days we have observed an upsurge in the number of positive cases.”
As a result, the government has resorted to contract-tracing, an effective method of infection control where one sick person identifies all those they were in contact with and they are tracked. However, this method is tasking and labour-intensive, requiring people to call and visit thousands of suspected cases for 14 days.
Spooked by the stigma around Covid-19, people suspected of having exposed others have listed fake numbers, making it challenging for the ministry to track contacts effectively.
To address this issue, the ministry is adopting web-based data management, which is linked to medical records. The 229 teams used in contact-tracing in the counties are being trained on how to use the tool.
Despite these efforts, the process of getting samples from the ground to the lab has been a logistical nightmare. The samples have to be refrigerated and in media where, in case there are viruses in the blood, they do not die before they get to the lab.
The labs for running the tests are in selected health and research facilities, and therefore teams had to be dispatched to pick the samples and then ferry them to these labs. This has contributed to the country only managing to test slightly more than 216,000 when they should have run more than a million tests by now.
The Ministry of Health has procured rapid-response vehicles at a cost of Sh102 million from money that Kenya got from the World Bank. The vehicles will be distributed to eight counties, including Nairobi metropolitan area, Migori, Nyeri, Uasin Gishu, Nakuru, Taita Taveta, Busia, and Elgeyo Marakwet.
