Coronavirus emergency, from next Monday all clubs, bars, pubs, nightclubs and restaurants in Kenya will have to close indefinitely from 7pm.
This is one of the initiatives taken a few hours ago by the Kenyan government to stem the possible increase of Covid19 infected people in the country.
Announcing that there have been no new cases since two days and that other suspicious persons are being investigated in various parts of the country, Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe has given precise instructions to citizens, including that of supermarkets to enforce the distance of at least 1.5 meters between customers, to limit access and if possible extend the opening hours of the activities, to allow customers not to crowd.
The same rules should also be followed by open-air markets and other shops.
Important decree also with regard to transport, with the obligatory reduction of matatu and bus seats, up to 60% less than their capacity.
For now, however, the data on containment and prevention in Kenya are encouraging, especially compared to other countries on the continent where, after the first cases of Covid19 , the number of infections has started to increase day after day. This is the case in the Maghreb area and South Africa, which in a week has seen poisitories double daily, so that from 3 cases to 220.
The reasons are not only to be found in the number of swabs and in the time taken to read the analysis, but also in the campaign implemented by the Government on people who have recently travelled.
The severe sentences for those who do not respect the car quarantine have already had results, with more than twenty people stopped and taken to hospital for tests, as well as the fight against fake news that has already seen two people at trial. Both are facing ten years in prison.
Meanwhile, Mbagathi Hospital in Nairobi, where the largest isolation ward for the Coronavirus has been set up, has released the first 44 people who tested negative for all tests 14 days after their admission. For now, except for the fact that there are at least 25 check-ups of suspicious people in various clinics in the country that have sent swabs to the National Influenza Centre in Nairobi, there have been no new cases in the country for two days.