UN predicts Covid to worsen in Kenya

 

The first major United Nation's report on how weather affects Covid-19 suggests the pandemic is likely to worsen in cold weather and in polluted areas.

Kenya is currently entering the rainy and cold season, normally the flu season in the country.

However, the report notes that government interventions rather than meteorological factors primarily determine how the virus spreads.

This is the first report on the effects of meteorological and air-quality factors on the Covid-19 pandemic, prepared by the World Meteorological Organisation.

The WMO is the United Nations authoritative voice on weather and climate.

Judy Omumbo, a scientist with the African Academy of Sciences in Nairobi, was involved in the report preparation.

It notes that other relevant drivers include changes in human behaviour and demographics of affected populations and, more recently, virus mutations.

“Laboratory studies of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, have yielded some evidence that the virus survives longer under cold, dry, and low ultraviolet radiation conditions.

"However, these studies have not yet indicated if direct meteorological influences on the virus have a meaningful influence on transmission rates under real-world conditions,” the executive summary reads.

Expectations are that, if it persists for many years, Covid-19 will prove to be a strongly seasonal disease.

“The underlying mechanisms that drive seasonality of respiratory viral infections are not yet well understood. A combination of direct impacts on virus survival, impacts on human resistance to infection, and indirect influence of weather and season via changes in human behaviour may be at work,” it says.

Evidence on the influence of air quality factors is still inconclusive, the report adds.

There is some preliminary evidence that poor air quality increases Covid-19 mortality rates, but not that pollution directly impacts the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, according to the WMO team. 

The team was established by WMO to provide a stand on potential weather and air quality influences on Covid-19, given the staggering number of papers and pre-prints currently available. 

Kenya is currently in its third wave and medics warn the situation might worsen.

"The third wave has officially surpassed the first wave and continues to rapidly escalate with upwards trend with the intensification of community spread extending outside Nairobi, which means the third wave may peak higher than the second wave with deadly consequences,” says Dr Ahmed Kalebi, the CEO of Lancet laboratories.

“Alarm bells should be ringing.”

Last week, Kenya hit the highest positivity rate since the contagion broke out in the country last year.

“The Ministry of Health is extremely concerned with the number of rising cases of those contracting the coronavirus disease in the country,” said the Health ministry in a social media message on Friday.

“Yesterday we recorded a positivity of 17 per cent.  Today it has gone up as we have recorded a 17.5 per cent positivity.”   BY THE STAR