Alarm as Kenya's Covid positivity rate spikes fivefold in a week
A health worker collects a swab sample from a resident in Kibera, Nairobi, for Covid-19 testing.
Health experts are warning Kenyans to brace themselves for yet another Sars-CoV-2 variant, Omicron, following a recent rise in Covid-19 cases.
Coronavirus cases have been on the rise in recent days even as the state is uncertain whether Omicron is circulating.
According to the latest update from the Ministry of Health, the positivity rate stood at 5.5 per cent on Saturday, about five times what it was just a week ago (1.1 per cent on December 5). The positivity rate refers to the percentage of people who test positive for the virus that causes Covid-19 disease from the overall people who have been tested.
See the reports below:
The positivity rate is a useful measure of how quickly the virus is spreading within a community. With a steadily rising rate, many medical experts are speculating that a new wave could be in the offing.
Data unveiled by the Health ministry on Sunday indicates that 201 people had tested positive for the disease on Sunday from 4,011 samples. These rising numbers have prompted some health experts to warn the public against complacency.
“Dear Kenyans. There is indeed a bug going around with similar clinical features to Covid-19. Yes, it could be seasonal flu. Just remember that Sars-CoV-2 enters your system in exactly the same way as that bug,” Prof Lukoye Atwoli, dean of the Medical College at Aga Khan University, said in a recent Tweet.
“So your risk of getting Covid-19 is high if you get the bug. If you protect yourself adequately from Covid-19 you’ll probably be safe from the circulating respiratory bug as well.”
Last month, scientists predicted that Kenya would experience a fifth spike in Covid-19 infections towards the end of November and beginning December. Unlike the third and fourth waves, they said a spike was more likely than a wave.
On Thursday, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) warned countries across the continent to ready themselves for another spike.
“We already have Omicron in seven countries. It is inevitable that we will experience another surge and that is why we are calling on people to get vaccinated,” said Dr John Nkengasong at a weekly briefing.
Differing symptoms
In South Africa, where Omicron was first detected, data shows that some of the symptoms - blocked or runny nose - differ from those associated with other variants, while others like headache, sore throat and body aches, which are similar to flu symptoms, still indicate an infection.
Preliminary studies, mostly in South Africa, show that Omicron does not cause severe illness, and deaths mainly occur among the unvaccinated.
But Omicron is highly transmissible, has a high positivity rate, and has high chances of reinfections and vaccine breakthrough infection. The latter occurs when a fully vaccinated person is infected with Covid-19.
On the severity of the disease, data from hospitals indicates that cases of infected people getting hospitalised or dying are low compared with the current community infection rate or previous waves.
Most people infected in South Africa, for instance, have a milder disease that does not require oxygen therapy compared with the Delta variant, which saw health facilities across Kenya overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients who needed emergency care.
A study in South Africa, published online Tuesday, offered a first glimpse at how vaccinated people might fare against the fast-spreading Omicron. Laboratory experiments found that while Omicron seems to dull the power of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, people who have received a booster shot might be better protected.
The study found that antibodies produced by vaccinated people were much less successful at keeping Omicron from infecting cells than other forms of Covid-19.
Similarly, early analysis of Omicron and Delta cases in the United Kingdom showed the vaccines were less effective at stopping the new variant.
But the studies offer an incomplete picture of how well the vaccine protects against hospitalisation or death from Omicron given that vaccines stimulate a wide-ranging immune response that involves more than just antibodies.
Update: The positivity rate is now at 6.5 percent as at December 12, 2021. This is according to the latest data from MoH, which was updated a few hours after this story went to press.
