Governor Kingi Declares Kilifi County A Covid-19 Free

Kilifi Governor Amason Kingi announced Thursday that the county no longer has active coronavirus cases after all patients recovered, but cautioned that the area may not yet be free from the pandemic.
“I am happy to announce that all the six patients at the Jibana isolation centre have recovered, meaning that we do not have active cases at the moment,” he said at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) labs in Kilifi Town.

However, he told residents to continue observing Ministry of Health protocols and directives as the correct position of the county was yet to be determined since many people were yet to be tested for the global malady.

“We should not celebrate, but instead brace ourselves for worse times, because we do not know what the mass testing exercise that we launched this week will reveal,” he said.

The county government started mass testing for the disease on Tuesday targeting health workers and journalists, who are considered to be at the forefront in the campaign against the pandemic that has killed thousands of people in the world.

“Scientifically, we do not have any Covid-19 case because all the six patients at our isolation centre in Jibana have fully recovered and were discharged yesterday (Wednesday),” he said.

Kingi lauded KEMRI scientists for the good work they were doing and the people of Kilifi for adhering to government directives.

Some 499 samples from the county were tested for Covid-19 in March 2020 and six persons tested positive and were taken to the Jibana isolation centre.

The KEMRI/Wellcome Trust labs in Kilifi are used to test samples from all the six counties within the Coastal region.

It has a capacity to test 100 samples per session, and due to the fact that it serves the entire region, the process has been slow for Kilifi County.

Kingi however said Mombasa was due to acquire its own labs and leave the local labs to cover Kilifi, Lamu and Tana River counties.

A researcher at the KEMRI labs in Kilifi, Mr. Charles Agoti,  told reporters that the four equipment at the centre had a capacity to test 100 samples per session of between six and eight hours and that it is able to test at most 400 samples per day, if the exercise is to be carried out 24 hour per day.