A health expert has said it is unlikely the country will experience another Covid wave.
“From my perspective it is most unlikely to get another wave of Covid. Given where we are and what we are experiencing in terms of data. I’m not seeing us get to that wave as it was predicted,” Global health expert Dr Bernard Muia said.
However, he said, there might be a possible rise in respiratory cases associated with changes in weather between June and August.
“When the weather changes to cold, we have increased cases of respiratory tract infections. Perhaps towards mid-June and towards the end of August that is the time we can get increased cases of upper respiratory cases together with Covid but not to that extent as to what we have been getting,” Muia said.
At the end of last month, the eminent committee of the Lake Region Economic Bloc (LREB) in its 15 advisory warned that the next Covid-19 wave would start at the end of April, reach peak around May 17 and decline after June 2.
LREB eminent committee chairman Khama Rogo said the likely daily average infection would be between 500 and 20,000, with at least 349 deaths.
Data from the Health ministry shows the country has recorded 95 new infection from 14,720 tests since the beginning of May.
There have been 105 recoveries within the same period and zero fatalities.
The positivity rate was 0.3 per cent from May 1 (last week on Sunday), shot up to 1.2 per cent on Friday and dropped to 0.8 per cent on Saturday.
The country has vaccinated 30.5 per cent of the targeted population, against the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 70 per cent.
“Vaccination is very crucial, our disease surveillance systems should up their game and testing should be increased,” Muia said.
Pathologist Dr Ahmed Kalebi said the low positivity rate at the beginning of May was a pointer in the right direction.
“Quite remarkable too is that Kenya had a marked reduction in deaths in 2020 compared to average deaths in previous years because of the impact of social restriction measures and public health measures like hand-washing, limiting diarrheal diseases,” Kalebi said.
