Kenya’s Covid-19 positivity rate rose above five (5) per cent on Saturday as 128 people out of 2,303 samples tested in the last 24 hours returned positive results.
The Ministry of Health (MoH) said Nairobi and Nyeri counties accounted for 95.3 per cent of the new infections (122). The capital city had 54 cases, while Nyeri had 68 infections.
Kiambu and Kisumu counties had two cases each, while Kakamega and Siaya had a case each.
One hundred and four (104) of the new infections were registered among Kenyan nationals, while 24 were foreigners.
Eighty-two (82) of the new cases were recorded among male patients, while 46 were female.
Patients aged between 20 and 29 years accounted for nearly half (49.2 per cent) of the 128 cases – at 63.
Those aged between 30 and 39 years followed (26), then 40-49 years (21); 10-19 years (six); 60 years and above (six); 50-59 years (five) and 0-9 years (one).
Kenya’s nationwide caseload now stands at 324,686, with the total number of Covid-19 tests conducted thus far being 3.66 million.
Twenty-six (26) patients were declared healed in the last 24 hours, raising the total number of recoveries to 318,446.
There was no death reported in the last 24 hours, therefore keeping the death toll unchanged at 5,651.
Five hundred and twenty-seven (527) Covid-19 patients are currently on treatment, with “no patient in the intensive care unit”, said the Health ministry.
As of May 27, 2022, a total of 18.18 million Kenyans had been vaccinated against Covid-19, with adults accounting for 16.45 million (90.5 per cent) of the inoculated population.
In the last 24 hours, Kenya administered some 9,875 Covid-19 vaccines, Health Cabinet Secretary (CS) Mutahi Kagwe said in a statement.
Real-time data by Reuters.com show a rise in the number of Covid-19 infections in the country in the last couple of weeks, with an average of 48 new infections reported each day.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that positivity rate should remain at five (5) per cent or lower for 14 days for a country to be deemed to have flattened the Covid-19 curve.
South Africa recently suggested that it is in the midst of a fifth Covid-19 wave, driven by two variants related to the Omicron strain that fuelled a surge in cases around the world in late 2021.
The United Nations says that the Southern Africa region is facing an upsurge in Covid-19 cases for the fourth consecutive week.
“The uptick has broken a two-month-long decline in overall infections recorded across the continent,” said the UN on its website.
In Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, where the latest wave was first detected, both hospitalisations and in-hospital deaths increased by 90 to 100 per cent, said the UN.
The surge is being fuelled by the Omicron variant amid relaxed public health and social measures, added the global agency.