COVID-19 UPDATE: 699 new cases recorded as Kenya celebrate no deaths from home-based care program.

Kenya has on Saturday August 8 recorded 699 additional Covid-19 cases from 7,175 samples tested over the last 24 hours.

This now raises the total case load in the country to 25,837, with active cases now at 13,938 which are being nursed at various health facilities and under the home based care program.

According to Health CS Mutahi Kagwe who was on a tour of Kakamega County to assess its level of preparedness to deal with the virus, 781 patients have recovered from the disease bringing the total number of recoveries to 11,899.

125 of those recovered were discharged from various health facilities with 656 being those from the home based care program.

Kagwe praised the home based program stating that none of the patients under the program had succumbed to the coronavirus disease.

“We have not recorded any death from the over 7600 cases that have gone through the system (home based care). …Most of the home based care cases are asymptomatic and it makes economic sense to just manage them from home”, Kagwe stated.

Unfortunately 5 more people succumbed to the disease raising the number of fatalities in the country to 418.

Kagwe was flanked by Devolution CS Eugene Wamalwa, Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya and Health Ministry officials.

On his part Governor Oparanya called on health Ministry to set up an official Covid-19 testing center in the county.

“Kakamega has no approved tested laboratory. I have submitted two requests to the Ministry of Health to consider making Kakamega a testing area as we have 16 expert machines”, Oparanya requested.

Health CS Kagwe however explained why the government has been unable to setup a testing center in every county.

“We have 32 testing centers across the country. The only reason we are unable to test in every county, is because of the combination & reagent systems that we have are not easily available”, Kagwe responded.

Health Ministry also presented to the County Government a donation of 4000 PPEs and 4000 masks to be used by health care workers across the county.