The number of Covid-19 tests is likely to go down further after four labs stalled.
The four have the capacity to run up to 16,000 tests in 24 hours, thus affecting the turnaround time in the results being relayed.
“Other labs have a given capacity that we cannot be able to exceed, especially in terms of batching,” acting Director-General of Health Patrick Amoth said.
They are the National HIV Reference Laboratory, the National Influenza Centre laboratory, the mobile lab in Namanga, and the Naivasha Dry Port laboratory.
“We have already put measures in place to ensure that these labs are up and running in the next 24-48 hours,” Amoth said.
The number of tests has been lower in the past few days in what the ministry has attributed to delay in relaying of results, as well as a scarcity of test kits and reagents.
The Kenya Medical Research Institute is next week expected to receive a batch of test kits to boost the number of samples tested.
The Health Ministry announced they are in the process of studying the possibility of excess deaths in the country as a result of Covid-19.
Out of the 10 new deaths reported on Thursday, three were community deaths among individuals aged below 30 years.
The total fatalities now stand at 516. The ministry has activated 20 centennial surveillance sites across the country particularly level four hospitals that have been tasked with recording any mortality related to Covid-10.
The rise in deaths among younger populations has been attributed to a poor health-seeking behavior in the age group, compounded by stigma and fear of going to the hospital.
“These sites will be able to give us a clear quantitative answer as to whether we have more deaths or not,” Health CAS Mercy Mwangangi said.
She, however, noted that the data does not show a spike in deaths.
“We have not seen a spike in deaths, however for us to be able to say scientifically in a manner that we can stand by, we are currently in the process of doing that assessment to determine whether we are having any excess deaths,” Mwangangi said.
According to Amoth, a spike in deaths might not necessarily be attributed to Covid-19 since fear and stigma of going to the hospital means people could also die of other conditions.
He noted that the Health Ministry is working closely with the Ministry of Interior and the modeling team to be able to tell whether there are excess deaths.
Data from the ministry shows that the age group zeroes to nine forms 4.5 percent of the entire caseload accounting for around 1,400 cases while the biggest proportion of the caseload is people aged 30 to 39 years, which is about 33 percent of the total.
As at Thursday, at least 450 health care workers had been infected with the virus and 15 had died.
Data from Thursday’s briefing show that the number of cases in the country now stands at 31,441 after 426 more cases were confirmed.
The new cases were from 5,158 samples tested in a day. The total number of tests conducted since the first case is now 407,610.
On a positive note, 257 more people recovered from the virus, 195 from home-based care, while 62 were discharged from hospitals. This brings the total number of patients who have recovered to 17,869.