A Chinese guy walks into a restaurant and sneezes. Customers flee the building in terror. It sounds like a joke or a "My Friends" joke, where maybe the Chinese guy was hired to not pay the collective bill.
Unfortunately this is not the case and the true fact, happened in Naivasha in Kenya, is a sign that even in Africa the psychosis of the Coronavirus and its potential effects has arrived, considering every citizen of Asian origin as a possible vector of the virus.
National television K24 was the first to report that customers of "Kamere", one of the good restaurants in the town of Rift Valley, frequented by tourists and local citizens and residents inside the residence-hotel of the same name, began to peer at a customer with clear oriental features, who entered the restaurant, sat down and ordered food. Visibly cooled, the customer would have sneezed slightly and this would have been the signal that immediately led all patrons of the crowded restaurant to leave the dining room and walk out of the building. Some left their lunch on the table and others took the opportunity to leave the restaurant for good.
"The stranger was definitely sick and, because of the fear of the coronavirus, people fled the hotel before he left too," said an eyewitness interviewed by the TV station.
According to the witness, many residents in the area have been living in fear since the virus outbreak was announced, citing the fact that the area is heavily frequented by Chinese citizens.
The Chinese citizen, who had also asked for a room in the adjoining hotel, would in turn leave before local health service officials arrived at the restaurant to check his state of health and possibly admit him. But the hotel had not yet registered him, and as a result it was not possible to trace him.
"We will conduct a three-day training workshop for selected health workers in the country in the wake of the epidemic in China," said Nakuru's chief of health care, Samuel King'ori, "adding that Naivasha will be the first county to train its health workers on how to control suspicious cases.
In other counties, such as Narok, checks are also being carried out on Chinese citizens, asking the authorities to monitor their movements as well as their state of health.