•As of Thursday, only 12 counties had managed to meet the 300-bed isolation centre requirement.
•Ability by counties to protect the vulnerable populations is also key.
Image: MERCY MUMO
The period given to the counties by the President to set up a 300-bed capacity isolation centres is fast coming to an end.
The National Emergency Response Committee will this week either ease the current measures or tighten extend them.
As of Thursday, only 12 counties had met the requirement, with the rest of the counties still racing against time to achieve the target.
The country surpassed the 6,000 caseload on Sunday after 259 new coronavirus cases were reported.
The number of positive cases now stands at 6,070.
“In our meeting on Thursday in State House we agreed on six key parameters that are a basic minimum that will determine whether we lift the containment measures or not,” health DG Patrick Amoth said.
“One of them is the emergency response preparedness at the county level especially the establishment of the rapid response teams to be able to deal with these cases once they arise.”
The RRI teams are supposed to be scaled down to the subcounty levels where the cases are expected to come from.
The second parameter is the enhancement in terms of case detection and management, with the ministry already conducting training of trainers for the county health management teams.
This is further expected to be cascaded to the subcounties level and to community health volunteers.
“The third is risk communication. We challenge each and every governor in respect to their areas of jurisdiction to be able to dialogue with the people to be able to communicate what each and every county is doing towards Covid-19,” Amoth said.
Nairobi and Mombasa already have established community transmission.
According to the DG, another factor that will greatly influence the decision to be made this week will be availability of laboratory testing across counties.
So far there are 28 laboratories spread across 12 counties both in the public and private sector.
The other two parameters are the public health and social measures that need to be under check, including inter-county movement and infection control measures such as the ability of counties to protect the vulnerable such as the elderly and those with preexisting medical conditions.
The counties are expected to use the resources already extended to them to map out such people so that they can be supplied with masks.
The new cases were from 2,718 tests conducted in a day. The cumulative test conducted since the first case was recorded on March 13 is now 165,196.
The total fatalities stand at 143 after two more patients succumbed to the virus on Sunday.
On a positive note, 35 patients were discharged from various health facilities on the same day, bringing the total recoveries in the country to 1,971.
Edited by Henry Makori