74 in ICU as Kenya's Covid-19 cases exceed 109,000

Health CS Mutahi Kagwe

Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe addresses the media in Nairobi on March 4, 2021, following the dispatch of Covid-19 vaccines from the Kitengela depot to counties.

Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • The death toll rose by three to 1,879 and the number of recoveries by 53 to 87,623.

Kenya’s Health ministry on Monday announced 337 new Covid-19 cases, which raised its number of confirmed cases to 109,164, even as the number of patients under intensive care increased by five to 74 within a day.

Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe said the new patients were found after 2,924 samples were analysed in the past 24 hours, raising the number of Covid-19 tests carried out in the country since the first one last March to 1,336,614.

Of the new patients, 311 were Kenyans and 26 foreigners, 198 male and 139 female, the youngest one month old and the oldest 85.

Nairobi County accounted for 267 of the new infections and was followed by Kiambu with 27, Kajiado six, and Mombasa and Nyeri with five each.

Laikipia, Nakuru and Machakos counties each recorded four new cases, Kisii, Vihiga, Uasin Gishu and Makueni two each, and Meru, Murang’a, Siaya, Kisumu, Garissa, Kilifi and Isiolo one each.

The death toll rose by three to 1,879 and the number of recoveries by 53 to 87,623. Thirty two of the 53 three people were in the home-based care programme and the rest in hospital.

Out of the 74 patients in ICU, 23 were on ventilator support, 40 on supplemental oxygen and 11 under observation.

Another 23 patients were separately on supplemental oxygen, all of them in the general wards.

By Monday, 532 patients had been hospitalised at facilities across the county while 1,498 were being treated at home.