Pandemic peaks in Nairobi, Mombasa and some towns

Covid 19 has already peaked in Nairobi, Mombasa and neighbouring counties and may be on the decline, says a scientific report by the government.

The report published on Thursday, by the Ministry of Health, the Presidency, local and UK scientists says the rates of infections peaked in June in Mombasa and early August in Nairobi.

“We find that the rate of new infections has also peaked in Kiambu, Kajiado, Machakos Kwale and Busia.” Kwale is predicted to have been the first to peak in the middle of May.

The report however says infection rate is predicted to still be rising in other more rural counties mainly in the Rift Valley, Eastern and North Eastern regions. “We forecast that the final county to reach peak infection rate will be the arid and sparsely populated Wajir County in coming days,” says the study published in the online medRxiv platform.

The study also predicts the rate of deaths from the disease to have peaked in August. “We estimate that both daily positive test detections and daily observed deaths attributed to Covid-19 across all of Kenya were peaking in early August 2020.”

The study led by John Ojal of the Kenya Medical Research Institute also included the Director General of Health, Patrick Amoth, administrative secretaries at the ministry, Mercy Mwangangi and Rashid Aman as well as representatives from the Presidential Policy and Strategy Unit.

The work also involved researchers from the University of Warwick, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of Oxford, all of UK, and Pwani University, Kenya.

“Our prediction is that rates of new positive tests and deaths attributed to Covid-19 will enter a long-tailed decline from August 2020 onwards. It is also likely hospitalisation incidence will follow a similar trend to the infection and death rates,” says the report.

The study says the rates of infections in Kenya have been quite high almost comparable to what happened in Europe and the US; however the disease was less severe locally with fewer deaths. In most Kenya urban areas the research says up to 41 per cent of the population has already been infected with Covid 19.

“Despite this penetration, reported severe cases and deaths are low. Our analysis suggests the Covid-19 disease burden in Kenya may be far less than initially feared.” The authors say it is still a paradox why the high infection rates but less severe disease and deaths in Kenya and other African counties compared to Spain, UK and some US cities.

“The reason for this apparently low level of Covid-19 disease in Kenya is unknown,” the teams says.

While non-reporting, and a younger population, the team says are possibilities, they suggest the main reason may be some kind of population immunity against severe Covid-19 in Africa. “It seems likely that a significant factor in the epidemic resolving is through population immunity,” says the report.