NAIROBI MARCH 13, 2020 — The virus which exploded in China’s Wuhan City in Hubei Province has claimed 4,600 lives with over 126,000 people infected globally out of whom 67,000 have recovered.
Kenya has become the first country in the Horn of Africa to confirm the first case of coronavirus, a virus which the World Health Organization on Wednesday declared it a global pandemic.
The case, which the country’s health ministry said was confirmed on March 12 become the first case to be positively confirmed in Kenya since its outbreak in China’s Wuhan city in December last year.
Addressing the country at a press conference today, Health cabinet secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the victim, a Kenyan female is said to have jetted in the country on March 5 from the United States via London.
The case was positively confirmed by the National Influenza Centre Laboratory at the National public health laboratories of the ministry of health.
“The patient is in stable condition and is being managed at the infectious disease unit at the Kenyatta National Hospital,” said Kagwe when he addressed the media.
The health minister assured Kenyans that proper measures were being strengthened through its National Emergency Response Committee on Coronavirus by providing strategic leadership working through the government approach to respond to the case in the implementation of mitigation measures.
And while the news sends shocks to Kenya’s 50 million populations, the government said it has traced contacts and names of the persons who traveled with or sat next to the victim, including their names to help in curbing possibility of its spread.
“Most people who become infected may experience only mild illness and recover easily, but the disease can be more severe in others, especially the elderly and people with chronic illnesses,” said Kagwe.
Kenya now joins the 11 African countries drawn from northern, western and Southern Africa after the continent’s first case was reported in Egypt on February 14.
The latest statistics from WHO indicate that already Egypt leads with the number of confirmed cases standing at 59, followed by Algeria with 20 confirmed cases.
- South Africa (7 cases)
- Tunisia (5 cases)
- Senegal (5)
- Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Morocco (each reported two confirmed cases)
- Togo and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) confirmed two cases each.
The African Union’s centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) through a statement by its Africa head Dr. John Ngekasong at the Africa Union (AU) on Tuesday in Addis Ababa, said proper measures have been put in place.
“We have distributed testing kits capable of testing over 10,000 people, purchased more emergency medical items including test kits, thermal scanners and other critical medical supplies and stockpiling them to meet the requests from member states,” he said.
The current global death toll from COVID-19 which now stands at over 4,000, and more than 110,000 confirmed cases, according to WHO, the pandemic has already spread to more than 115 countries and territories.