The government has sounded a high alert after a case of novel coronavirus was recorded in China last week.
Acting director general at the Health ministry Patrick Amoth on Wednesday said the alert had been sent to all the 47 counties through the Council of Governors and the county directors of health.
Amoth said surveillance has been heightened at all ports of entry and screening has started because the country has a big business relation with China.
“On a daily basis, we get at least three to four flights so we have started screening for all passengers coming from China as we wait for whom to give us the way forward,” Amoth said.
Coronaviruses typically affect the respiratory tract of mammals including humans and are associated with common cold, pneumonia and acute respiratory syndrome.
Symptoms include fever, coughing and difficulty breathing. The viral infection can cause pneumonia and can be passed from person to person.
“So far 440 cases have been reported with nine deaths giving a case fatality ratio of two per cent. This is a new virus which has not been detected before,” Amoth told the press in Nairobi yesterday.
The infection has so far spread to Beijing, and other South-Eastern Asian countries such as Japan Thailand, South Korea with the latest case being reported by the US on Tuesday.
The World Health Organization had initially ruled out the possibility of cases being identified in other countries.
Amoth said the WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was holding a meeting in Geneva yesterday regarding the measures to be taken.
He said Ghebreyesus would advise whether states should declare it a public health emergency of international concern.
The person with the virus was a traveller from Wuhan, China, and was identified by Thai officials on January 8, and hospitalised the same day.
China has already shared the genome sequencing of this novel coronavirus with the international scientific community.
The World Health Organization said Monday it believed an animal source was the "primary source" of the outbreak, and Wuhan authorities identified a seafood market as the centre of the epidemic.
But China has since confirmed that there was evidence the virus is now passing from person to person, without any contact with the market.
The Chinese government announced Tuesday it was classifying the outbreak in the same category as the SARS outbreak, meaning compulsory isolation for those diagnosed with the disease and the potential to implement quarantine measures on travel.
