389 people have tested positive for the Coronavirus, as cases in Kenya rise to 12,062. The cumulative number of samples tested has also risen to 233,641 after 3,545 samples were tested in the past 24 hours. Of the new cases 260 are males while 129 are females.
Speaking during the daily Covid-19 update in Murang’a County where he had gone to inspect the County’s preparedness, Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said men account for two thirds of the total infections. 5 patients have succumbed within the last 24 hours, and 4 of them had underlying issues.
However, he reiterated the need for home based care to be well integrated, saying it’s the best bet for dealing with many cases. He said originally, health authorities hadn’t implemented the home based care programme because of a lack of direction from the World Health Organization.
He added the other reason they’ve turned to home based care is because the knowledge of the virus is more prevalent at the moment. He said 37,000 community health workers have been trained so far, and that there are plans to roll out care guidelines for family members.
Speaking on the same, Health DG Dr. Patrick Amoth said the home based protocols will be translated to Swahili and local dialects for all Kenyans to understand, “We’ve started a monitoring and evaluation tool to see the performance of home based care,” he said, adding that there has been no death reported under the programme so far.
“This is the direction we want to take,” he said. He said of the 345 people who have recovered from the disease on Friday, 134 have been discharged from various hospitals, and 211 from the home based care programme.