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Kenya: Kagwe Says Mass Vaccination Urgent to Avert Movement Restrictions

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Nairobi — Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has urged Kenyans to get vaccinated to protect themselves against COVID-19 even as the country reported three cases of the Omicron variant on Wednesday.

The variant was detected from three travelers from South Africa, two Kenyans and a South African national.

Kagwe who spoke in Mombasa warned that the Omicron variant which was first detected in South Africa could be a dominant variant in the coming days.

The Health Cabinet Secretary stated that the country can avoid going into lockdown or imposing stricter containment measures if more people got inoculated.

“From what we are hearing and the information we are getting from other countries across the world is that the variant spreads very quickly, very fast. The effect of the spread is that, if one is vaccinated, the level of attack is a lot less and the need for hospitalization is a lot less,” he said.

He added that the ministry was sequencing samples picked from passengers from other countries as well including those who had not reported the virus adding that the Health Ministry had stepped up the measures to curb the virus.

“Even now I can predict that it is a matter of time before there is a wider spread of this virus in the country. The question is whether it will spread amongst people who have been vaccinated in which case in can easily be contained or whether it will spread amongst people who have not been vaccinated in which case we are going to have high levels of hospital occupancy,” Kagwe said.

He added that henceforth any person who contracts the omicron variant will be placed on mandatory quarantine.

Kagwe further said that in the countries where the variant is dominant, authorities have confirmed to him that the new strain is spreading very fast.

He however noted that the level of hospitalizations linked to Omicron is less compared to the Delta variant which continues to wreak havoc across the globe.

To curb the spread of the virus, Kagwe said the ministry will institute containment measures at all points of entries and border points. He added that the ministry was working together with other East African countries to come up with a common position on the handling of the virus.

The Health CS stated the Health Ministry has advised counties to step up containment measures in preparation for a possible surge in Covid-19 cases.