NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 25 – Kenya said Monday that more than 1000 children had contracted COVID-19, five months since March when the pandemic broke out in the country.
Health Chief Administrative Secretary Rashid Aman said 768 are aged ten years and above while those under five years are 430.
Kenya had recorded 32,557 positive cases with 554 fatalities and 18,895 recoveries by August 24.
“It was thought that they could be community reservoir of transmission in households but emerging evidence suggest that children may not be super-spreaders of the virus as it was thought earlier because,” Dr Aman said, “as you can see from these figures the proportion die is very low in line with what has been observed in other places.”
Although the rate at which children succumb to the virus is low, Aman reiterated that their survival remains to be a concern and called for mothers to take precautions during and after pregnancy in order to keep the neonatal mortality rate at bay.
“The first 28 days of life is the most vulnerable period of the child’s survival. Children face the highest risk of dying in their first month of life. A recent estimate by the UN Inter-agency Group for child mortality indicates that our neonatal mortality rate rose to 29 per 1000 births in 2018. Not a very good indicator and this shows that we need to work hard in bringing down the number of neonatal deaths,” he said.
On Monday, Kenya recorded 193 COVID-19 cases from 3,381 samples tested since Sunday, bringing to 32,557 the total number of cases registered in the country since March.
Kenya has so far tested 425,364 samples since March.