Covid-19: Kenya records 479 new cases, seven more deaths

Coast General Covid ICU

A health officer at Coast General Hospital in Mombasa County checks machines in a Covid-19 ICU ward on July 27, 2020.
 

Photo credit:  Laban Walloga | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe also announced on Tuesday that seven more patients had succumbed to the virus, raising the country’s death toll, about a year since its first Covid-19 case, to 1,886.

Kenya’s Health ministry on Tuesday announced 479 new Covid-19 cases, which raised its number of confirmed cases to 109,643, even as the number of patients under intensive care increased by 12 to 86 within a day.

The number of patients in ICU on Monday was 74.

Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe also announced on Tuesday that seven more patients had succumbed to the virus, raising the country’s death toll, about a year since its first Covid-19 case, to 1,886.

CS Kagwe said the new patients were found after 4,043 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 1,340,657.

Of the new patients, 424 were Kenyans and 55 foreigners, 257 male and 222 female, the youngest one year old and the oldest 93.

Nairobi County accounted for 189 of the new infections and was followed by Machakos with 117, Mombasa 36, Nakuru 33, Kiambu 31 and Turkana 13.

Uasin Gishu and Siaya counties each recorded nine new cases and then came Trans Nzoia with eight, Busia seven, Nandi five, Kilifi four, Kajiado, Kisumu, Meru and Makueni three each, Kakamega two, and Mandera, Taita Taveta, Elgeyo Marakwet and Kitui one each.

The number of recoveries by 113 to 87,736. Sixty five of the 113 people were in the home-based care programme and 48 in hospital.

Out of the 85 patients in ICU, 22 were on ventilator support, 52 on supplemental oxygen and 12 under observation.

Another 24 patients were separately on supplemental oxygen, all of them in the general wards.

By Tuesday, 565 patients had been hospitalised at facilities across the county while at least 1,600 were being treated at home.