Kenya records 504 new Covid-19 recoveries

Two hundred and forty-five more people have tested positive for the coronavirus, Health Chief Administrative Secretary Rashid Aman (pictured) said on Monday.

The new cases, of which eight were of foreigners, were drawn from 3150 people tested in the past 24 hours. This takes the national infection tally to 30,365 as the health ministry is taken to task to explain its disbursement of virus mitigation funds to counties.

Of the new patients, the youngest is an eight month old infant while the oldest is 79 years old.

"According to our data, 29,538 which is 98 per cent of the confirmed cases are local transmissions. This means the virus is fully domiciled within our people in the villages, estates, our counties and the entire country since all the 47 counties are now affected," Aman said.

As of August 17, Nairobi and Mombasa counties continued to have the highest attack rates of Covid-19 at 406.8 and 184.1 per 100,000 people respectively, when compared to the national average of 63.3.

Kiambu County has, however, overtaken Mombasa to the second position in the tally of coronavirus cases. Nairobi has reported 17,889 cases, followed by Kiambu with 2,228, Mombasa with 2,224 and Kajiado with 1,627.

Aman added that 504 more patients were discharged after recovering from the diseases. In a trend that has been witnessed in recent weeks, a bulk of the recoveries at 461 were under the home based care program. There have now been 17,160 recoveries since the first infection was reported in early March.

"I want to thank our healthcare workers for the good work they are doing that has enabled us to achieve these results," Aman said.

Unfortunately, eight patient died from the virus, Aman said, adding that five had underlying conditions. This raised the fatality toll to 482.  

Aman reiterated the need adhere to containment measures and implored everyone wash their hands.

He reminded people that they should wash their hands – with soap and water or using alcohol based sanitisers – at "every point, and any moment after touching someone, surfaces made of copper, cardboard, plastic and stainless steel."

"You must also wash your hands after touching door handles, elevator doors and buttons, after removing masks, going to the bathroom, before eating, and blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing," he added.

Aman further implored healthcare workers to stick to and religiously practise the World Health Organisation’s infection prevention and control (IPC) slogan of "my five moments for hand hygiene."

"High standards of hygiene is the number one measure of keeping the coronavirus disease at bay, even as we employ other containment measures of wearing face masks, social distancing as well as avoiding public gatherings," he said.