•The 300-bed capacity facility located along Thika Road was been undergoing equipping
•This adds to Mbagathi Hospital, which has a bed capacity of 120 beds
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
Twenty people are being held in isolation at the Kenyatta University Teaching and Referral Hospital.
The 300-bed capacity facility along the Thika Superhighway was undergoing equipping to boost the holding capacity.
This adds to Mbagathi Hospital, which has a bed capacity of 120 beds.
“KU is a huge facility. Those who are there and those who have been hospitalised there before are not affected by this at all but we are not going to admit new cases of a regular nature to the facility,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said in a briefing on Saturday.
Already, all the county governments have set up isolation facilities as part of the preparedness measures, with the national government planning to increase the capacity by setting up more in boarding schools and national stadiums.
The experts based at the Kenya Medical Research Institute laboratories are also involved in research to self-sustainability in regards to Covid-19 testing in the country.
The success of the research will see local manufacturing of items required for testing for the virus, which the country is importing at the moment.
“We are involved in very heavy work as we speak and we hope soon, we can come up with good news about our ability and self-sustainability in our testing operations,” Kagwe said.
The ministry is also moving people held in designated facilities depending on their status to prevent them from infections.
As at Saturday, 1,806 out of the 2,050 people being held under mandatory quarantine facilities had been tested.
Kagwe called on all those visiting supermarkets or any open-air market to wear masks with immediate effect to help reduce the rate of transmission of coronavirus.
So far, Kenya has a total of 126 positive cases with four fatalities, including a six-year-old boy who died at KNH on Friday.