Nairobi Hospital overwhelmed with Covid19 positive cases.

At a point in time when President Uhuru Kenyatta lapsed cessation of movement in and out of earlier restricted epicentre and high risk areas Nairobi Metropolitan, Mombasa County and Kwale — allowing free transport of human vectors for the Covid19 to travel and mingle with most vulnarable groups upcountry – Nairobi hospital is getting overwhelmed as number of positive cases being admitted to the private facility surge.

“Over this past weekend, the management faced a big challenge to stretch the hospital’s capacity to accommodate a sudden rise in cases presenting at the accident and Emergency department with suspected Covid-19,”

In a statement on Tuesday, hospital CEO Christopher Abeid said as at July 4, the hospital had admitted 164 patients with 22 requiring intensive care admissions.

He noted that the country is experiencing a surge in the number of positive symptomatic patients. Virus cases rose to 8,250 on Tuesday with 164 confirmed fatalities.

With the eased restrictions, the countries cases are expected to rise exponentially. Abeid hopes that the hospital partnership with the UN will pull through which will enable establishment of a facility in 5-8 weeks aid in solving the low capacity problem.

This comes even as the hospital improved admissions from a low 35 per cent bed occupancy in mid-April to a high 63 per cent in July. “With this rising challenge, we are hopeful that the hospital board will support the next phase of the TNH-UN Covid-19 care partnership.

This will give us a 150-bed state of the art Coronavirus hospital at the old nursing school,” he said.

According to him, the facility will have a 25 ICU bed capacity with ECMO capacity and its own operating theater. “It is a fantastic opportunity to migrate Covid-19 care completely from the Main Hospital Campus in the next eight weeks,” he said.