"The figure announced by the Ministry of Health on Friday 16 July does not reflect the correct situation.
Kilifi County, through its Chief Health Officer Charle Dadu, has rejected the results of its infected people, after Minister Mutahi Kagwe attributed 224 cases in just 24 hours to Kilifi, which is said to have overtaken Nairobi in the number of positives for the first time.
In an interview with the Daily Nation newspaper, Dadu assured that those figures were not the result of tests conducted in the last 24 hours.
"We only recorded 62 cases from a total of 332 tests that we handed over to KEMRI on July 16," Dadu said. "Another extra 162 were added to the daily report from backlog of swabs. On the other hand, there is a problem with the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kilifi, which after the second wave had already asked to return to its main job, which is research. This means that there is no certainty about how they are conducting the analysis.
According to Dadu, the current capacity for swab analysis has decreased, which means that only about a quarter of the submitted swab results are released in time to be counted in the next 24 hours. According to the county health department there is evidence that some of the patients reported among Friday's 224 cases have already recovered, which would mean that these are from earlier tests, probably carried out between 27 June and 15 July.
From this point of view in the evening, Health Minister Kagwe, from Nairobi, admitted that the data regarding the number of cured patients could be inaccurate, but did not respond directly on the numbers of Kilifi, which would expose a more serious situation, as also reported by the portal of Italians in Kenya on Saturday 17.
This controversy allowed the Daily Nation to view a report in which the number of positive cases in Kilifi County as of July 14 would be 4508 out of 28,763 swabs taken, a percentage of 15.6 percent. At the same time, 24,255 people tested negative and 70 died from the virus. 32 within the county and 38 elsewhere.
The number of active cases, according to the report, is 237, with 129 patients in isolation at home and the rest in various facilities, including six on oxygen in Kilifi.
According to Charles Dadu, most of the deaths were accompanied by previous illnesses. Research into the variants present in the county is still ongoing. However, 180 of the 224 cases reported were from Kilifi town and the neighbouring village of Tezo.
However, the county health officer admitted that the outlook for Kilifi and the surrounding area is not good.