The number of people who have tested positive for the Indian variant in the country now stands at 20, the Health Ministry has confirmed.
This is after 15 more cases were confirmed from a genome sequencing conducted on 17 samples picked from travelers from India.
This is in addition to the five cases that were reported one week ago.
The B.1.617 was picked by surveillance teams from five travelers of Indian origin who arrived in the country more than one week ago.
The five are working on a fertiliser plant in Kisumu’s Kibos area and have been isolated.
According to Health CAS Dr. Rashid Aman, the efforts to try to contain the strain of the Indian variant, 18 positive cases by the antigen test on travelers who had arrived from India were confirmed.
The 18 were tested for PCR in national influenza and ended turning positive as well.
They were further taken to the KEMRI WelcomeTrust Kilifi for sequence analysis where 15 of the samples turned out to be the Indian variant.
One of the sequences turned out to be the UK variant.
“We are looking at enhancing surveillance, especially in the major private hospitals because the people who are likely to travel are likely to go to public health facilities where we do routine surveillance for these variants,” Amoth said.
He continued that;
"What is important is that we are going to enhance our surveillance system to be able to pick up the variants but of paramount importance is that the public health social measures will work for these variants and other variants that have been declared variants of concern."
The Dg has however noted that no cases have been picked from the community level especially around the Kibos fertiliser site where the first five cases were reported.
The B.1.617 variant has been blamed for India’s second wave of infections that has seen the country’s cases surge to more than 20 million.
The variant has been classified by the World Health Organisation as a variant of interest.
The variant was recorded in Uganda last week. The variant had been detected in recent days on a Ugandan who had returned from a visit to India.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has warned India’s intense outbreak was a reminder that Africa must stay vigilant.
This comes even as the number of covid-19 positive cases in the country hit 164,386 after another 410 more people tested positive for the virus.
The new cases were from a sample size of 3,799 tests conducted in 24 hours, representing a positivity rate of 10.8 per cent. The new cases comprise 393 Kenyans and 17 foreigners aged between 5 months and 100 years old.
The CAS confirmed that 22 more deaths were recorded pushing the fatalities to 2,950. 18 of the deaths were reported on diverse dates while four are late deaths reports from health facilities audits.
