The Kisumu county government has threatened to sue to have unclaimed bodies buried in mass graves as unclaimed bodies.
This is one one of the measures the county is taking to curb the spread of Covid-19 as infections in the county and region continue to rise.
Health executive Boaz Nyunya in a statement gave 48 hours notice to all the mortuaries to disposes all the bodies in their custody.
"Failure to which we will move to court to have them removed and buried in mass graves as unclaimed bodies,"Nyunya said.
He added that mortuaries failing to obey the directive will have their licenses cancelled.
"We have established that the prolonged stay of bodies in the mortuaries leads to abuse of burial protocols, eventually making it difficult to control the number of mourners attending such ceremonies," he said.
The executive said bodies must be released from the mortuaries by 10am and must be buried the same day.
Nyunya said there are 212 bodies in various private and public morgues in the county.
"All these will be declared as unclaimed bodies if not released to relatives within the stipulated time".
He added that mortuaries are under instructions not to accept bodies brought in from outside their premises, except for police cases. They must also file daily reports on the new bodies and related details.
Multi-agency teams backed by police officers, chiefs, subcounty administrators and enforcement officers will carry out fresh crackdowns to ensure burial ceremonies are conducted according to the Covid-19 protocols.
"We wish to assure the people of Kisumu and other stakeholders of our resolve to battle this wild and merciless pandemic that has continued to ravage the world amid rising deaths and grave devastation to the global economies, including Kenya".
In the statement, Nyunya said Kisumu has so far registered 5,994 accumulative Covid-19 cases,from 43,000 tests.
"We have a weekly positivity rate of 28.4 per cent.The county has cumulatively reported 139 deaths since the outbreak of the virus in March last year, reflecting a case fatality rate of 2.4 per cent ".
"We have 687 active cases. Out of this, 112 are in hospitals".
Kisumu Central remains the epicentre of the disease followed by Kisumu East and Kisumu West subcounties. No subcounty has been spared.
"Our public and private hospitals have overstretched their capacities as more cases emerge," he said.