Covid 19 in Kenya is becoming less and less scary.
The data of the last few days speak for themselves: the number of swabs tested specifically, i.e. those of people with symptoms who require hospitalisation or home care, with supplementary treatment such as the supply of oxygen, fluctuates between 1,000 and 2,000 a day and the percentage of positives in the country is below 5%, which the Ministry of Health considers to be the warning threshold.
In the last 24 hours there have been only six deaths linked to the virus, while 505 patients have been discharged from hospital or have recovered from home treatment.
A total of 1 209 people in Kenya remain positive for the virus, most of them with previous health problems. In any case, only 87 (the lowest number in months) are in intensive care, while 387 are in need of oxygen.
A further 2633 people are in home isolation and many of these are little more than symptomatic.
These are figures that encourage optimism but must not diminish the need to vaccinate the population, not only because the virus is changeable and Kenya is far from achieving herd immunity (according to KEMRI the country would fluctuate between 40% and 50% of total coverage) but because vaccinating means restoring confidence in the local economy and showing foreign countries the good will to make their population safe and interact with those who arrive.
But it is difficult to overcome the reluctance of most of the population, and leaders do not make important statements to convince citizens to vaccinate. A good number of them, moreover, are caught up in the start of the election campaign ahead of the polls in August 2022.
Those who suffer, as is well known, is mainly tourism, and it is hard to see how the government will be able to fulfil its promise to fully vaccinate 10 million Kenyan adults by the end of the year, given that 3 million people had still not been immunised by the end of September (only 2.725 million had received both doses of the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, compared to 3.613 million who had received only one). The percentage of fully vaccinated is 3.3%.