Oguna becomes vaccine advocate after brush with death

Covid-19 may have given him the scare of his life, but it also made him stronger.

As Kenya marks the first anniversary since the disease was reported in country, Government Spokesperson Cyrus Oguna counts himself incredibly lucky to be alive.

Last July, he was on the brink of death with Covid-19, to the point he started hearing strange voices in his head. 

He was hospitalised for 28 days, and thereafter took a long and rough road to recovery.

He now uses his experience to lift the spirits of others and encourage Kenyans to follow the guidelines given by the Ministry of Health. He is also an ardent advocate of the Covid-19 vaccine.

 “I am not a doctor, so I am going to talk generally. As a Covid survivor, I am aware that there are many survivors out there that may be afraid, that may be cautious, particularly those who are in the healthcare sector,” he told the Star.

“They may be panicking a little bit, but that is okay because we are dealing with a pandemic whose body of knowledge is still very limited so every day they are learning more and more about it.”

 Last Tuesday, he visited the Mutuini Health Centre in Dagoretti South, Nairobi, to encourage those being vaccinated.

 Oguna fell sick after taking a three-day trip to the Coast in July last year. He said that he felt fatigued and was sweating heavily.

“In the space of almost one week at the Coast, I visited Kilifi and Kwale counties, before travelling back to Nairobi, only to leave again for Hola the very next day. I came back to Nairobi after three days, all this while, still nursing the symptoms,” he said.

“I was feeling a bit under the weather. I was navigating a minefield of symptoms; suppressed appetite, manageable low-grade fever, muscle aches on my thighs and back, burning sensation on either side of my lower ribs, and mild headaches.”

Despite experiencing the symptoms, Oguna says Covid-19 was not in his mind as he had recently tested negative thrice.

Test results later came back positive. On the day he was hospitalised, Oguna suddenly woke up in excruciating pain at night. He couldn’t breathe properly and, he later said, “any effort to do so felt like a bayonet was being driven through my chest. I was literally gasping for air.”

 “I was immediately put on heavy IV antibiotics and supplemental oxygen. I would be on oxygen for the entire period of my hospitalisation; 28 days in total,” he added in a string of Tweets last year.

“During that period, I started hearing incomprehensible voices in my head, making me wonder whether I was still alive or dead. The pain, fatigue and lethargy continued unabated.”

Oguna was finally discharged.

“Though not fully recovered, whatever remained could be managed from home. I went home for another 14-days of total bed rest and quarantine.”

He has since fully recovered and has become an ardent advocate for vaccination.

He says the current vaccine hesitancy among some people is because of misinformation peddled through social media.

“Even the faith-based organisations that may be reluctant, it is because correct information has not been able to get to them. Without information going to our people it creates room for misinformation and therefore there is a lot of myth out there because of misinformation,” he says.

“I am a frontliner. I would have been very happy to be vaccinated but I am not a healthcare worker and therefore in the next stage certainly I will be more than ready to come forward to give confidence, to also give motivation to others who may have been infected, the survivors, but may be reluctant to come and be vaccinated,” he said.

“I would have preferred honestly to be given the jab but for reasons that you understand I know I will get it in the next phase.”