Kenya plans to increase its isolation bed capacity as the country’s number of COVID-19 cases continues increasing, the presidency said on Wednesday.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta convened the third extra-ordinary session of the national and county governments co-ordination summit to deliberate on a set of COVID-19 response measures to be put in place ahead of the gradual re-opening of the country’s economy.
In a statement, the presidency said that the national and county governments had set a target of 300 isolation beds for each county so as to deal with the rising cases of infections.
The announcement comes in the wake of revelations by the Kenyan government that public health facilities are overwhelmed by the pandemic despite the virus not yet peaking in the country.
As a result of this, the government plans on having hospitals discharge COVID-19 patients who are asymptomatic to go and recover at home.
“… this opportunity is also a blessing in disguise. We must embrace it and grow it. If we fight Coronavirus from the ground up; from the County up to the National levels, we cannot fail. We will succeed,” President Kenyatta said.
The acting Director General of Health Dr. Patrick Amoth said homecare was the way to go now so as to ease the strain of the rising infections on the nation’s health facilities.
“WHO has provided guidelines on how to go about it (homecare), that we are translating into Swahili so as to ensure Mwananchi (ordinary citizen) understands what is required of them.”
The summit also resolved to task county governments to review their fiscal and strategic plans for the 2020 to 2021 financial year to include COVID-19 prevention and control measures. Some counties, like Kirinyaga County, had attempted to include funds to fight the pandemic in their supplementary budgets.
The summit further approved the inclusion of the Council of Governors in discussions aimed at reopening of places of worship, schools and other learning institutions. Places of worship remain closed as part of measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 while schools, which were closed indefinitely, are set to reopen in September.
The summit is expected to meet again on Wednesday next week to review guidelines for the gradual re-opening of the economy, existing containment measures and protocols for the progressive re-opening of places of worship, among their matters, the presidency said.
