President Uhuru Kenyatta has said that the country has done well in fighting the coronavirus pandemic six months after it was reported in the country.
Uhuru was speaking while opening the Covid-19 Virtual Conference on Monday focusing on the resilience of counties during the pandemic and reflecting on options for a sustainable future.
The president said that the country has started to flatten the curve even in the middle of the virus.
“In the middle of this crisis, the curve is beginning to flatten. However, we must not celebrate this happy moment too soon, but rather celebrate it with a great deal of caution,” he said.
The President however warned that the pandemic is at its dangerous point, the inflection where the curve can either flatten further or escalate or take an upward surge.
We must not celebrate this happy moment too soon but rather celebrate it with a great deal of caution.
President Uhuru Kenyatta
He said that the country should remain focus on bringing the pandemic to an end.
“Our shared goal must also remain insight, and this goal is very simple, the victory of Covid-19 and nothing else and we must achieve it with zero option,” Uhuru said.
“…to achieve it, we must move away from tactical response to strategic response. Instead of symptomatic reaction to structural reactions that are long term and transformative and this is what I call positive resilience.”
Uhuru also said that the country should remain brutally honest with its approaches which he said is critical to building resilience going forward.
The President also shared his three-element framework which has to be looked at since the pandemic trike the nation on March 13.
This includes a postmortem analysis of how the country has handled the Covid-19 crisis six months after it began to manifest itself in the country.
“If all our models had projected a severe scenario that did not happen, was it because we were forewarned, or was it because of strict interventions that we put in place. How does our national response team compare with others within the region, the continent, and the world?”
He also said that an in more clue analysis should be carried out and that it is too soon for the country to celebrate the flattening of the curve.
“If we are to shift our response from tactical to strategic interventions, we must do assimilation o how this will work,” Uhuru added.
He added that a shift from symptomatic response under Covid-19 to structural response under Universal Health Coverage (UHC) should be thought about.