County Health Minister has dispatched officials to fumigate and establish contacts with all those that the infected foreigner mingled with
By Albert Lemomo
Fear and panic has gripped residents living within and without Amboseli game reserve, in Kajiado South Constituency following reports by the Ministry of Health that one of the recent cases of the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) was a French national who had visited one of the hotels in the park.
“All of us are living in fear, we no longer interact freely after we came to realize that one of the patients who tested positive among the 8 new cases that were announced yesterday [by Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe] had resided in our hotel for two days where he interacted with us and some locals and from this morning we have observed social distancing and we are waiting for further directions from the public health officials,” said one of the employees of the affected hotel, but who spoke on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to the media.
The case came up at a time some of the hotel managers in the area, are mulling to close down the exotic hotels over concerns that they have been making huge losses since the break of the pandemic.
“We’ve incurred huge losses as dozens of our customers who had booked with us and other neighbouring hotels have cancelled their bookings already and then again the travel ban that has been installed by government starting this wednesday will hurt our business and maybe in the next 10 days we will be closing down our hotels and quit a number of our staff are going to be affected.” One of the hotel managers told Kajiado Star on phone.
Kajiado County Health Minister Esther Somoire confirmed the incident and stated that the County government has already dispatched a team of public health officials to fumigate and establish contacts with all those that the infected foreign mingled with.
“Already, our public health officials are at the hotel to fumigate and undertake tests from the hotel attendants to validate if they are infected and establish all the contacts that the foreigner might have engaged during his two day visit at the park,” Somoire said.
County Commissioner Joshua Nkanatha has reiterated that all bars shall remained close and has urged residents to adhere to the government directives.
“As the County security team, we have resolved to carry out intense patrols in all areas of our towns to ensure that entertainment joints remain closed, shut all public gatherings as well as ensure that all the directives given are adhered to because our health is important and shall remain our main priority”.
