Nairobi — Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has urged Kenyans to get vaccinated to protect themselves against COVID-19 even as the country reported three cases of the Omicron variant on Wednesday.
The variant was detected from three travelers from South Africa, two Kenyans and a South African national.
Kagwe who spoke in Mombasa warned that the Omicron variant which was first detected in South Africa could be a dominant variant in the coming days.
The Health Cabinet Secretary stated that the country can avoid going into lockdown or imposing stricter containment measures if more people got inoculated.
“From what we are hearing and the information we are getting from other countries across the world is that the variant spreads very quickly, very fast. The effect of the spread is that, if one is vaccinated, the level of attack is a lot less and the need for hospitalization is a lot less,” he said.
He added that the ministry was sequencing samples picked from passengers from other countries as well including those who had not reported the virus adding that the Health Ministry had stepped up the measures to curb the virus.
“Even now I can predict that it is a matter of time before there is a wider spread of this virus in the country. The question is whether it will spread amongst people who have been vaccinated in which case in can easily be contained or whether it will spread amongst people who have not been vaccinated in which case we are going to have high levels of hospital occupancy,” Kagwe said.
He added that henceforth any person who contracts the omicron variant will be placed on mandatory quarantine.
Kagwe further said that in the countries where the variant is dominant, authorities have confirmed to him that the new strain is spreading very fast.
He however noted that the level of hospitalizations linked to Omicron is less compared to the Delta variant which continues to wreak havoc across the globe.
To curb the spread of the virus, Kagwe said the ministry will institute containment measures at all points of entries and border points. He added that the ministry was working together with other East African countries to come up with a common position on the handling of the virus.
The Health CS stated the Health Ministry has advised counties to step up containment measures in preparation for a possible surge in Covid-19 cases.
The confirmation of the Omicron variant came just a day after the Ministry of Health raised concern over the rising COVID-19 positivity rate over a week-long period. The ministry reported a 6.5 per cent positivity rate, 1.5 per cent above the containment threshold recommended by WHO.
Kenya crossed the World Health Organization (WHO) high-risk limit of five per cent after 149 people tested positive for the disease from a sample size of 2,280.
The new infections raised the total number of documented virus cases in the country to 256,484 as the Health Ministry races to vaccinate 10 million people by Christmas.
Speaking in Nairobi Tuesday, Acting Health Director General Patrick Amoth stated that the trend is worrying calling on Kenyans to adhere to all containment guidelines in place and get vaccinated.
“We have noticed the curve going up in the past one week from one percent to 6.5 per cent yesterday. So that is a warning sign to us so that we can go back to the drawing board to ensure that we continue to adhere to the public health social measures but more importantly that all who are eligible get vaccinated,” he said.