NAIROBI, Kenya April 22 – The Ministry of Health is planning to undertake 250,000 COVID-19 tests by June 30.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe Wednesday said the multipronged surveillance test mechanism is aimed at detecting virus cases in a bid to contain further spread of the pandemic that has claimed 14 lives in the country with 303 infections reported as of April 22.
He said currently the country has 25,000 kits, but the government was working with development partners so as to achieve the target.
“This 250,000 will not match our population, hence we are collaborating with our development partners to ramp up our surveillance testing mechanisms,” he said.
He said the plan entails community-based surveillance, hospital based surveillance and population based surveillance.
“For the community based surveillance we are looking at 100,000 households. For the hospital based surveillance, we have mapped out 20 hospitals in 16 regions,” Kagwe said.
The CS said a mass testing exercise is ongoing in targeted high risk areas and populations which include health workers.
Kagwe said the mass testing will guide the country in fighting the coronavirus war.
The World Health Organization recently warned that despite ‘the seemingly slow pace of infections in Africa, the number of coronavirus cases could surge from just thousands now to 10 million within three to six months’.
In Somalia, the cases have multiplied nine-fold in a week from 26 cases on April 13 to 237 by April 21.
In neighboring Tanzania, the numbers have swollen seven-fold from 32 cases to 254 within the same period.
“These developments should concern us. They might translate into a frightening reality to our horn of Africa,” stated the CS.
Kenya as at April 22 had 303 confirmed cases out of 707 samples that were analyzed with 24 hours.
The first case was registered in the country on March 13.
Eighty-three patients have since recovered from the virus.
A total of 15,124 samples have been tested.
