President Uhuru Kenyatta has come under pressure to ease Kenya’s Covid-19 restrictions after a sharp decline in infections and hospital admissions reported in recent weeks.
Kenya has met a majority of indicators used to downgrade restrictions in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, including ICU admissions, positivity rate and deaths.
This has seen public health officials, politicians and traders push Mr Kenyatta to relax the restrictions, including the night curfew, that have stifled business and hampered economic growth.
The WHO recommends that restrictions can be eased if the positivity rate —the proportion of tests coming back positive — remains below five percent for at least two weeks.
The UN body says governments can also relax the containment measures if hospitalisations and ICU admissions decline for the last two weeks and Covid-19 deaths drop over a period of three weeks.
Kenya’s positivity rate has remained below five percent since September 30 and dropped from 14.5 percent on August 15 to 2.3 percent yesterday as the government steps up testing and vaccination.
“Factors that are hindering economic growth like the nationwide curfew should be lifted. We have continued to witness a fall in infection rates in the last couple of weeks,” said Githinji Gitahi, the chief executive of Amref Health Africa.
“It’s time to move from response to recovery. Focus should now shift to vaccination.”
He added that Kenya has so far contained the infectious disease, echoing comments from public health officials.
“When lifting the Covid-19 social restriction measures, WHO recommends that positivity rate must fall below five percent consistently for about two weeks. Of course there are other measures that need to be taken into account before a decision is made,” said Director-General for Health Patrick Amoth.
“I would not want to preempt what the boss will talk about tomorrow. Just hold your hoses for any announcement tomorrow.”On Tuesday, President Kenyatta hinted that the Covid-19 containment measures could be eased in the coming days.Hospitalisations from Covid-19 have been falling over the past three weeks from 1, 021 admissions in September 30 to 586 yesterday.This has eased the burden on hospitals that had run out of beds, especially ICU facilities, in the previous months.Deaths from the virus have also fallen to an average six over the past three weeks from double digits in the previous cycles.Official data shows 110 deaths have been reported in October compared to 393 in September and 795 in August.Alcohol manufacturers, taxi operators, supermarkets and bars […]