•Acting director general of Health Patrick Amoth said surveillance tests are routinely done in more than ten sites in Kenya.
•Kenya was the first country in the world to report the FY.4 Omicron lineage in 2023.
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The Ministry of Health has belatedly disputed reports of a spike in Covid-19 cases caused by a new variant.
The claims were made by doctors two weeks ago. Some said they were seeing patients they suspected had the emergent JN1 Covid-19 variant.
The ordinary PCR tests for Covid-19 cannot differentiate between variants. To accurately determine a variant, a sample of respiratory material from a nasal or throat swab must be sent to a laboratory, where technicians conduct tests to identify the virus’s genetic sequence.
Acting director general of Health Patrick Amoth said such tests are routinely done in more than 10 sites in Kenya.
He said they have particularly been looking for the JNI variant since December, but no case has been reported in Kenya.
Amoth said the increased coughs and sore throats are caused by seasonal flu.
“None of these sites have reported an increase in the numbers of the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid 19) but increased cases of influenza have been reported,” he said in a statement.
Amoth said the increase in flu is normal because Kenya reports an upsurge in two peaks-February to March and July to November.
“The current increase in numbers is in line with the expected cases of influenza at this time of the year and there has been no significant changes in the number of hospitalisations and deaths reported,” he said.
However, according to past records by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), Kenya’s two flu seasons are March to May and July to October/November.
The last cases of Covid-19 in Kenya were reported in May 2023 by the Kemri Wellcome Trust Research Programme through its SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance programme across five health facilities in Kilifi.
Kemri-Wellcome Trust published its results in the Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal under the title “New SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant with Spike Protein Mutation Y451H, Kilifi, Kenya, March–May 2023”.
Its scientists said they identified a new branch of the Covid-19 Omicron variant, which was responsible for the unusual outbreak of ‘flu’ that many Kenyans reported in April and May 2023.
Kenya was the first country in the world to report the new lineage, which the scientists named FY4.
“Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Kenya has detected the emergence of a new omicron lineage with unique spike and ORF3a gene mutations,” Kemri-Wellcome Trust reported.
“Detection of FY4 lineage coincided with an increase in SARS-CoV-2 cases in Kilifi and has also been detected in other parts of the country.
“Growth estimates suggest the potential for continued increase in geographical spread of FY4,” they said.
Patients with the new variant presented mainly with cough (98 per cent of them), fever (78 per cent) and nasal discharge (74 per cent), while seven per cent present with difficulties in breathing.
Last year, the WHO said most countries are no longer reporting Covid-19 data, yet the disease is still killing people.
“In the past month, only 25 per cent of countries and territories have reported Covid-19 deaths to WHO,” said WHO boss Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus in his weekly media briefing.
“And only 11 per cent have reported hospitalisations and ICU admissions. This doesn’t mean that other countries don’t have deaths or hospitalisations, it means they are not reporting them to WHO.”
Early last year, the Star confirmed Kenya continued to report Covid-19 data to WHO but there is no evidence this has continued in 2024.
The WHO tally shows at least 343,918 test-confirmed Covid-19 cases and 5,689 Covid-19-related deaths in Kenya by end of 2023.
As of April 1, 2023, 23.7 million vaccine doses had been administered.