The government of Kenya has admitted defeat in the fight against Coronavirus, has relaxed precautionary measures and prepared for an influx of deaths and carnage across all 47 counties. This comes two weeks after Uhuru Kenyatta ended a four-month lock-down of the country in an attempt to stem the spread of the deadly virus.
Uhuru Kenyatta reopened the country in July 7th, 2020 and announced that Kenyan borders will be open for international travel on July 15, 2020. Among other things permitted, restaurants were allowed to open to the public, so were churches, mosques and other areas of worship. During the lock-down, neither restaurants nor places of worship were allowed to open their doors to the public.
Other precautionary measures undertaken by the government during the lock-down included a dusk to dawn mandatory curfew as well as locking down Covid-19 hot spots from the public including Nairobi County and many other places. The government also made it mandatory for everyone to wear a mask at all public places across the country.
On July 21st, 2020, it was reported that the government has estimated that cases of covid-19 are more likely to sky rocket with up to 18 million Kenyans getting infected. This has prompted the national government to send health officials to all 47 counties to determine each county’s preparedness to handle a surge in coronavirus cases within their borders.
Apart from the assessment of county hospitals’ readiness to take in covid-19 patients, there is a concerted effort prepare for casualties of the deadly virus. It is expected that as more people get infected with the novel coronavirus, the more likely to be a rise in the number of these patients succumbing from the infection.
As such, several counties have allocated swaths of land for a possible cemetery in which bodies from the covid-19 virus will be interred on. For example, Siaya, Kisii and Kakamega counties have purchased land that will be used for the burial of the victims while the Nairobi City County government have provided new guidelines in the manufacture of a large number of body bags to handle a possible rise in Covid-19 deaths.
There has been at least 14,000 confirmed covid-19 cases in Kenya of which 260 people have died while nearly 7,000 of them have recovered. Nairobi continue to be the most affected county while Turkana County is the least affected.
When compared to neighbours, Kenya has the highest cases of Covid-19 cases in the entire Eastern Africa region with 14,000 cases. Tanzania on the other hand only have 509 reported covid-19 cases while Uganda has 1,071 cases. On Monday July 20, 2020, Tanzanian president John Pombe Magufuli declared Tanzania free of Coronavirus pandemic. How accurate the president’s proclamation is subject to debate.
Gobally, coronavirus has affected more than 15 million people with more than 600,000 deaths. More than 9 million people have recovered from the covid-19 disease world-wide.
The United States is so far the most affected country in the world with more than 4 million people affected by the disease. Of these 4 million cases, more than 146,000 people have died from covid-19 with at least 2 million people recovering from the disease. The United States reports more than 70,000 new cases of covid-19 daily with Brazil following closely behind at 45,000 new infections per day.
