Rise in infant infections attract Kagwe concern
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe yesterday expressed concerns over increased cases of infants being infected with Covid-19 and urged Kenyans to protect them against the disease.
While giving his daily briefing on the Covid-19 situation in Kenya, Kagwe urged persons intending to visit women who have given birth not to do so as a way of protecting new-borns.
Instead he appealed to those interested in visiting new-borns, to send money to their parents via cellular money transfer platforms.
The concerns came after a one-year-old infant tested positive for the virus yesterday.
The infant is among 447 Kenyans who tested positive for the virus in the last 24 hours out of the 3,803 samples tested, this being the highest number of cases that the country has recorded bringing the total number of coronavirus cases to 8,975.
“Women should keep discouraging people and visitors from visiting them. This is what we should do, to protect infants,” Kagwe said.
“We need to protect infants.. tuma hata kwa simu (you’d rather send cash via mobile phone). That visit can wait,” he said.
Peak projection
Kagwe who spoke in Mombasa, reiterated that the country is projecting that the peak for the virus infections will be from August through to January next year.
With respect to Mombasa County, he warned there could be a surge in Covid-19 cases in the next two weeks following the government’s move to ease restrictions of movement in and out of the Port City.
“The government anticipates an increase of cases in Mombasa considering it’s a tourist hub, following the lifting of cessation orders and resumption of domestic flights, international flights and the standard gauge railway every one now thinks of visiting Mombasa and as a result we will see a spike of covid cases in the next coming weeks,”he said.
Following the move, he called on the county government to prepare itself in handling the situation by putting in place stiffer measures.
“Despite Mombasa having put in place the best measures in the fight against Covid 19, compared to other counties it’s not yet time for relaxation ,since it remains the county with the second highest numbers of Covid-19 and with less restrictions in place the numbers will increase,”he said.
Sample size
By yesterday, Mombasa had a total of 1,663 cases from a sample size of over 24,000 tests. Some 733 people have recovered while there have been 56 deaths from Covid-19.
A total of 811 Covid-19 patients in Mombasa have been admitted while 335 patients are under home-based care.
“Today we have the highest number of cases ever since, we have 447 cases in the past 24 hours. Everyone must take this matter very seriously because you can see the cases are increasing by the day,” Kagwe said.
