NAIROBI, Kenya Apr 8 – The Government is preparing home-based care guidelines for COVID- 19 which will enable patients diagnosed with mild coronavirus symptoms to be managed at their homes.
Health Chief Administrative Secretary Mercy Mwangangi says the government will complete the validation of the protocols with World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centres for Diseases Control (CDC) within the next 24 hours.
“The technical COVID-19 taskforce has looked at the protocols and put them up together, what we are doing in the next 24 hours is validating them with WHO and CDC to review them if they meet the standards,” she said.
The home-based guidelines will include an intervention which will see sociologists do home assessments to ensure homes are viable for self-quarantine.
Ministry of Health, Director General, Patrick Amoth said that sociologists and health department officials will conduct assessments to determine the suitability of homes.
“Once we are through with the guidelines, we will be able to bring the counties to speed so that we can be able to manage mild cases at home,” Amoth said.
The government says most of the infections reported in the country are mild with most of the new patients being under the productive members of society.
Amoth said that the home-based guidelines, will boost the government’s efforts to fight will the virus whose infections increased to 179 on Wednesday, with 9 recoveries. Five people have died of the disease in the country.
So far, all persons under quarantine are placed under government designated facilities while the infected patients are only managed at specific hospitals.
Globally, the coronavirus cases are approximateyly 1.5 million with more than 82,000 deaths by Wednesday.