Nine police officers from Mwatate in Taita Taveta County have been asked to go into quarantine after they came into contact with a colleague who tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The officers are based at various police posts in Mwatate sub-county including Bura Mission, Mwatate Headquarters, Bura station, and Musau post
The officers, Citizen Digital understands, had attended training alongside other officers at the Kiganjo National Police College.
A letter written to the officer in charge of Mwatate Police Station ordered the nine who came in contact with the infected officer to undergo the requisite 14-day quarantine.
The officers have further been instructed to avoid any form of contact with their families until they are cleared.
John Mwangeka the CEC health Taita Taveta said the disease surveillance team has begun monitoring the officers but said they had not accurately established if the said colleague was positive for the virus.
“The Ministry of Health has to confirm but the information we have is that it was a false alarm,” he said.
The latest comes after the Kenya Police Training College in Kiganjo was closed down indefinitely of fears of the pandemic.
Reports indicate that an officer who was undergoing training had tested positive for the new coronavirus.
So far, Kenya had recorded 184 cases five more patients tested positive on Thursday.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe on Thursday said the new cases include three Kenyans and two foreigners.
Three of the five patients had traveled from Tanzania while the other two arrived in the country from the UK and UAE respectively.
The CS further disclosed that four more patients had recovered from the disease bring the total number of recoveries in Kenya to 12.
At the same time, he revealed that one more patient had succumbed to the infection in Mombasa, raising to seven the number of patients who have succumbed to COVID-19 in Kenya.
CS Kagwe noted that three of the new cases are in Nairobi and two in Mombasa.
“Only one of these cases came from mandatory quarantine facilities while the other four were picked by our surveillance teams from contact tracing,” said Kagwe.
The five new patients who have tested positive — three males and two females — are aged between 39 and 77 years.
The Health Cabinet Secretary said contact tracing was ongoing, noting that a total of 2,046 persons had been monitored, out of which 1,448 had been discharged with 598 on follow up.