Kenyan media reported on December 18 that according to Kenyan Ministry of Health officials, Kenya’s coronavirus test kits are in stocked insufficient to carry out sufficient testing, especially in counties outside Nairobi.
At present, 90% of the daily test results released by the Ministry of Health come from private hospitals and private laboratories.
Kenya’s Ministry of Health has tested only 39,112 samples in the past week, with an average of more than 5,500 tests for the novel coronavirus a day, including a maximum of 8,230 tests per day and a minimum of 2,283 tests per day.
Ken Health Ministry officials said that at least 6,000 to 10,000 tests should be carried out every day and last for two weeks to see whether the curve of COVID-19 is flattening or rising.
Kenya Ahmed Kalebi, chief executive of the Lancet, said that the absolute number of new cases and the rate of positive tests in Kenya have been declining recently, as have the number of deaths and hospitalizations.
He believes that the second wave of the pandemic in Kenya is coming to an end, but he is worried that the frequency of people traveling and interacting during the end of the year holiday, coupled with the full resumption of classes in January next year, Kenya may usher in a third wave of the pandemic.
So far, Kenya has conducted a total of 997,216 coronavirus nucleic acid tests, 93,761 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 1,629 deaths, 75,274 recovered, and 16,858 existing cases.
