Kenya’s Covid-19 testing capacity has declined, raising concern that this has affected actual infection numbers.
So far, there has been slightly over a million tests conducted, with the Health ministry doing an average of 3,495 tests a day in the last three days.
Testing was at an all-time high between November 16 and 22 last year.
A senior officer working in one of the testing sites said that there is a shortage of extraction kits used in testing and that majority of the tests conducted are actually coming from private institutions.
Testing for Covid-19 involves inserting a cotton bud like swab into the cavity between the nose and mouth (nasopharyngeal swab) for 15 seconds and rotating it several times. The swabbing is then repeated on the mouth to make sure enough material is collected.
Following the results, the developers said they will now reformulate the vaccine and re-launch trials in February hoping to have approved shots by the last quarter of 2021.
In Kenya, the study proposes to recruit both male and females adults aged 18 to 99 years to receive two injections at 21 days apart. The participation will also be open to HIV positive persons who are in stable condition.
The two-year study in Kenya will be led by Dr Videlis Nduba of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri).
Recruitment will be done at Kemri centres in Kisumu and Nairobi and the Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi. Also participating will be the United States Army Medical Research Directorate-Africa in Kisumu. [Gatonye Gathura]
Health & Science - By
Kamore Maina | December 13th 2020 at 07:00:00 GMT +0300
On the morning of November 29, Jackson Muchiri, lost his first born son at a health facility in Juja, Kiambu County.
Michael Maina, 28, had been taken to hospital with respiratory complications.
His death would, however, open a new chapter of agony for the grieving family, revealing a sad tale of greed, broken trust and a father desperate to find out the truth about his son’s demise.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) intervened after it emerged the family was a target of an intricate web of rogue doctors and mortuary officials out to milk the dead to the grave.
Dick Muthee, who runs a small fleet of food delivery motorbikes and taxis in Upper Hill, Nairobi, says most customers are mainly office women. “Fried chicken, sausages and chips are the most ordered foods.”
Top clients, he said, are mainly young office women far outnumbering men, with older women likely to eat home packed foods.
One of the delivery men said even with home deliveries, women greatly outnumbered men. “These are women mainly living in owner-occupied houses, high-end estates, or in gated communities,” he told MyHealth.
Muthee says in some cases they have standing orders where on specific days they have to pick nyama choma (roast meat) from particular restaurants and deliver in line with a prearranged weekly menu.