Six-year-old is so far Kenya’s youngest coronavirus victim

Health CAS Dr Mercy Mwangangi. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

A six-year-old boy died from Covid-19-related complications at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) on Thursday.

The boy was taken to the hospital due to fever, difficulty in breathing and coughing and was on long-term management for anaemia.

He is said to have just come back from India for treatment, but the family did not disclose this fact to the medics attending to him until the time his condition deteriorated.

One of the medics managing the child became suspicious when the fever did not respond to treatment and the patient was taken to the paediatric ICU for critical care.

They took a swab from the child which came back positive for Covid-19. However, the results came after he had died.

Several doctors, nurses and other staff exposed to the coroinavirus in this instance have proceeded on 14-day mandatory quarantine since the boy was not in isolation.

None of the staff wore any protective equipment while attending to him because he was not considered a high risk.

Other paediatric patients in the ward and staff that attended to him have also been put on immediate quarantine to contain the virus, as a thorough audit is conducted to establish loopholes that led to a high risk patient getting into the ward and exposing staff and patients to coronavirus.

The net effect of this could be dire across the country as the number of contacts that ought to be traced is huge.

Globally, not many children have been infected or lost their lives due to the coronavirus pneumonia even though babies and children under five have been most vulnerable to the coronavirus.