Power outage impedes MoH's exercise on Covid-19, CS Kagwe says

The Ministry of Health has said that it faced challenges within its server while working on the updates on coronavirus.

Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said the challenge was mainly caused by the power outage.

Kagwe said they are facing a number of challenges while carrying out the tests of the virus.

Nevertheless, the CS said that they managed to test 1,205 samples in the last 24 hours.

Out of the collected samples, 189 turned positive for the virus, adding the total cases in the country to 10,294.

The CS also said 12 more people lost their lives, adding the number of deaths due to Covid-19 related cases to 197.

The CS said at the time of response to an alert on the suspected case, contacts are listed for follow up and investigation and close contacts are tested while the rest are followed for 14 days.

“I must say that this has not been an easy task,” Kagwe added.

The government is now rolling out a web-based application linked to the Kenya electronic medical records to trace the contacts, unlike the earlier method where telephones were used to trace the suspects.

During the mass testing exercise for the virus in Kawangware and Eastleigh areas in Nairobi, the CS had said that some people were giving wrong information, hence hindering the process.

All county governments have been asked to rapid response/contact tracing.

According to the government, there are 229 rapid response teams in the country.

The National Response and Contact Tracing team is currently contacting training for the 229 teams on the usage of the web-based tool and data management.

The CS admitted that logistics support including transport still remains the biggest challenge. To mitigate transport challenges faced by the response team, the CS presides over the handover of motor vehicles to over 13 counties.

The vehicles were procured by the Covid-19 Health Emergency Response Project (C-HREP) at a cost of Sh102 million.