‘Kenya could have 10,000 coronavirus cases by end of April,’ MOH DG Patrick Amoth says
Ministry of Health Director General Patrick Amoth posits that the total number of coronavirus in Kenya could rise to 10,000 by the end of April.
Speaking during a Press conference on Monday, Dr. Amoth said the virus is not following a trend.
“We postulate that we could have 1000 cases by first week of April, 5000 by mid-April and 10,000 by end of April,” he said.
According to Dr. Amoth, testing is currently being done on people who are in quarantine by day 8.
He further revealed that the Health Ministry can only work on 300 samples in 24 hours.
“We are working to ensure Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) comes up by end if this week,” he added.
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His sentiments come on the backdrop of increasing cases of coronavirus in Kenya with the total now at 50 as of Monday.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said it is now evident that the virus is no longer being imported from outside the country.
So far, Nairobi County has 37 cases, Kilifi 6, Mombasa 4 while Kajiado, Kwale and Kitui each have one case.
He stated that the COVID-19 disease is now being spread through community transmission and urged Kenyans to avoid traveling upcountry to avoid exposing the elderly to the virus.
Studies suggest the severity of coronavirus rises with age.
In Italy, which now has the world’s highest death count, the average age of those dying is 80, according to a study by the Italian national institute of health.
In China, where the pandemic started, people 70 and older accounted for just 12 percent of all infections but more than half of all deaths, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the United States, people 65 and older have thus far accounted for 31 percent of cases, 53 percent of intensive care hospitalizations and 80 percent of deaths, according to U.S. government data.
On Thursday last week, a total of 1,307 elderly residents of Spanish nursing homes were reported to have died from coronavirus, roughly a third of the country’s total death toll.
In the Madrid region alone, nursing home deaths totaled 855 since the start of the epidemic.
But it is not all doom and gloom. The worldometers website reports an increase in the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19.
As of Monday, 156,317 people had recovered globally compared to 35,012 who died after contracting the disease.
A 102-year-old woman recovered from coronavirus in the northern Italian city of Genoa after spending more than 20 days in hospital, doctors who treated her and her nephew told CNN.
Grondona was hospitalized at the beginning of March for “mild heart failure,” Dr. Vera Sicbaldi told CNN.
“She only had some mild coronavirus symptoms, so we tested her and she was positive, but we did very little, she recovered on her own,” she added.
Grondona left the hospital on March 26 and will now spend time recovering in a care home.
“I don’t know what her secret is, but I know she is a free and independent woman,” her nephew Renato Villa Grondona told CNN.
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