Counties warned to be on high alert over new COVID-19 variant

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has urged border counties to help in preventing new COVID-19 strains from entering the country by heightening surveillance. 

The CS was  speaking at the Narok Referral Hospital on Tuesday. 

Foreign Affairs CS Raychelle Omamo and their Energy counterpart Charles Keter accompanied him on an inspection tour of the ongoing national government projects which include upgrading hospitals in all the counties.

Kagwe stated, “We have to be very careful moving forward because, as you know, Narok is a border county…therefore as you have heard in international and national press, there is a new variant of COVID-19 that is also developing and we want to be sure that we’re keeping a high level of vigilance and surveillance so that we can prevent outbreaks of new variants in the country, and the first hope is in the border counties.” 

Last year in December, South Africa identified a new variant of the coronavirus that led to an increase in a second wave of infections. A few days before, Britain had also found a new variant of the virus.

On December 19, 2020, Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize tweeted, “We have convened this public briefing today to announce that a variant of the SARS-COV-2 Virus – currently termed 501.V2 Variant – has been identified by our genomics scientists here in South Africa.” 

“The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant,” he added.

In January this year, Kenyan scientists also raised an alarm on a coronavirus variant they believed was different from the one spreading in South Africa and Britain.

The coronavirus mutation responsible for the COVID-19 disease was discovered by about 

10 investigators from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). 

According to a principal investigator and researcher, Charles Agoti, the variant unique to Kenya was detected in a batch of samples taken from Taita Taveta County.

Agoti said, “Our interpretation is that because in this one place in Kenya we were seeing, it represents the majority of the sequenced samples; it does imply that actually, it could if it has intrinsic properties, be more transmissible. It could result in an increase in the number of cases locally.”