The Government has confirmed arrival of 237 Kenyans who had gone to India for treatment and announced that similar flights are expected into the country in the coming days.
Health Chief Administrative Secretary (CAS) , Dr. Rashid Aman confirmed that 237 Kenyans came back into the country yesterday night, accompanied by their caregivers and family and were received by the Ministry of Health staff who facilitated their accommodation in hotels at the government expense as they were being processed to proceed for home based self-quarantine.
Speaking during the COVID-19 media today the CAS announced that the Ministry will continue to conduct targeted testing in high risk areas and revealed that 14 people out of 922 samples tested in the last 24 hours have tested positive of coronavirus bringing the total number of Covid cases to 621. All the positive cases are Kenyans aged between 11 months for the youngest and 49 years for the oldest and 9 are males while five are females.
The overall number of samples that have been tested in the country so far are 29,430, the CAS added and revealed that so far 19 counties have been affected with Machakos County being the latest to report a case.
In the latest results Nairobi has recorded 10 positive cases, Mombasa 3 and Machakos one. Thirteen cases were picked by the surveillance teams while one case is from the quarantine facility. Four of the cases in Nairobi are from Kasarani, two from Makadara and one each from Umoja 1, South C and Irigu in Dagoretti South. Machakos has one case in Athi River and Mombasa 3 cases in Likoni.
Dr. Rashid also noted that the Government is working on expansion of testing capacity in all the Counties to enable truck drivers to be tested from the point of origin of their journey and also announced that the Government is working with County Governments and other agencies to educate the people who have been displaced by floods on containment measures against Covid-19.
The Acting Director General, Dr. Patrick Amoth disclosed that 34 health care workers out of 621 have tested positive either directly or indirectly for Covid 19, equivalent to about 5.5 percent of the cases in the country but non has died so far.
He also explained that out of the over 29,000 tested cases, around 21,000 are index or primary tests while the others are repeats for the patients in recovery.