BAD NEWS TO KENYANS AFTER CS KAGWE ISSUES STRICT WARNING

Since the existence of the deadly coronavirus that struck the entire world, millions of people have died with a larger number of people in critical condition in ICUs. In Kenya, as per records of fatalities in the second wave of Covid-19, there was a fall of numbers of positively tested people to numbers of fatalities.

During a statement given by Health cabinet secretary Mutahi Kagwe, he sensitized Kenyans to continue taking precautions and following every guideline and rule set to help curb the killer virus.

He stated that as the cases fluctuate people have become ignorant with most individuals not wearing masks and observing cleanliness. He further clarified that any person breaking protocol will be held accountable by law for their actions.

In the statement, he stated that 8 people have succumbed to the disease in the last 24 hours bringing the total number of fatalities in Kenya to 1,847, which is a rise from previous recordings.

If the trend continues then we might face a lockdown or curfew will be extended.

Kenya extended its nightly curfew to March 12 as part of measures aimed at taming the spread of COVID-19, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s office said.

In early November, Kenyatta extended the nightly curfew that was in place, and it had been due to expire on Sunday. It runs between 10 p.m and 4 a.m.

A ban on political and roadside gatherings that could turn into super spreader events was also extended for another 60 days, as was a prohibition on overnight events and vigils, Kenyatta’s office said in a statement.

When the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Kenya in March 2020, the government closed schools, imposed a curfew, banned public gatherings and at one point restricted movement in and out of the most-affected regions.

Some of the measures were eventually relaxed, and schools are expected to reopen on Monday. However, extracurricular school activities such as sports are banned for 90 days, as well as non-essential visits by parents and guardians, the president’s office said.

Like other countries around the world, Kenya’s tourism, education and other key sectors have been pummelled by the pandemic. Its second-quarter economic output declined for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2008.

Kagwe’s warning comes when a new form of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly in New York City, and it carries a worrisome mutation that may weaken the effectiveness of vaccines, two teams of researchers have found.

The new variant, called B.1.526, first appeared in samples collected in the city in November. By the middle of this month, it accounted for about one in four viral sequences appearing in a database shared by scientists.

One study of the new variant, led by a group at Caltech, was posted online on Tuesday. The other, by researchers at Columbia University, was published on Thursday morning.

Neither study has been vetted by peer review nor published in a scientific journal. But the consistent results suggest that the variant’s spread is real, experts said.

“It’s not particularly happy news,” said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University who was not involved in the new research.“But just knowing about it is good because then we can perhaps do something about it.”

Dr. Nussenzweig said he was more worried about the variant in New York than the one quickly spreading in California. Yet another contagious new variant, discovered in Britain, now accounts for about 2,000 cases in 45 states. It is expected to become the most prevalent form of coronavirus in the United States by the end of March.

Researchers have been scrutinizing the genetic material of the virus to see how it might be changing. They examine genetic sequences of viruses taken from a small proportion of infected people to chart the emergence of new versions.

The Caltech researchers discovered the rise in B.1.526 by scanning for mutations in hundreds of thousands of viral genetic sequences in a database called GISAID.“There was a pattern that was recurring, and a group of isolates concentrated in the New York region that I hadn’t seen,”said Anthony West, a computational biologist at Caltech.

He and his colleagues found two versions of the coronavirus increasing in frequency: one with the E484K mutation seen in South Africa and Brazil, which is thought to help the virus partially dodge the vaccines; and another with a mutation called S477N, which may affect how tightly the virus binds to human cells.

Source: HeraldKE