Meru county confirmed its third case of Covid-19 after a driver who had travelled from Mombasa tested positive.
The patient had been tested in Mombasa before traveling to Meru to deliver goods.
County commissioner Allan Machari confirmed the case, saying the patient was intercepted at Muthara, Tigania East constituency, on Tuesday.
The vehicle he had was detained at Muthara police station.
Machari spoke on Wednesday during a press briefing on Covid-19 in his office.
He said the county response teams in both Mombasa and Meru had started contact tracing.
Meru reported its first case on May 16 of a 23-year-old woman from Igoji, Imenti South.
“We have traced 17 contacts of the first case. They are generally family members.They have been tested but their results are still being awaited,” Machari said.
Machari said the second case was of a 35-year-old man from Gitimbine, Imenti North constituency.
“This case was confirmed on May 18. It was a result of interaction with a confirmed case in Garissa county,” Machari said.
He said they managed to trace all the 22 contacts of the second patient and put them on quarantine.
He said all had been tested for the virus and their results were pending.
The county boss said the 38-year-old driver who was tested in Mombasa but travelled to Meru to deliver goods.
“It is while he was in Meru we were notified of the situation and we managed to get him and put him on isolation at the Meru Teaching and Referral Hospital,” he said.
“We would embark on tracing contacts in Mombasa and Meru to have them quarantined and tested,” Machari said.
He said all the three cases in Meru were asymptomatic.
He said they had 23 other people in mandatory quarantine who were arrested as they came into the county from Lamu and Mombasa counties.
Edited by Henry Makori
