The Governor’s office and that of his Deputy have now minimal activities with the public getting very limited access to the offices. – By Ramadhan Kambi.
The workers have also been told to observe all the Covid-19 health protocols, minimize interactions to help curb the spread of the virus.
Addressing the media in his office where he announced the new measures, Governor Kingi said among those who have contracted the virus is a county executive, indicating the scale of the upsurge of the virus in the county.
“As a county, we have decided to scale down our operations for the next two weeks to reduce the infection rate. We have six officers who have interacted with many people and that’s why we do not want to take chances,” said Governor Kingi.
Kilifi County was by Wednesday starring at a crisis after some its workers contracted Covid-19, forcing Governor Amason Kingi to call for the scaling down of operations and also asking his health department to start conducting covid-19 tests among its employees.
He added that by scaling down county operations especially at its headquarters in Kilifi town, his administration will be trying to avoid a scenario where someone comes to seek services, and then he or she gets infected.
“It’s a two way traffic, we don’t want to risk the lives of our workers and also that of our people of Kilifi, a reason we are scaling down operations until the situation improves,” he said.
Since the first case was reported in the county, 24 medics have been infected while in the line of duty and currently the county has recorded 504 cases of Covid-19.
Mr Kingi said it was sad to see many people ignorant of the fact that this pandemic is real, saying that police cannot be used to win the war on the pandemic.
“Even as we take measures to reduce the spread of the virus, some hospitals and public places have continued to ignore the containment measures. We cannot use the police to fight Covid-19. We need to have personal responsibility. People still throng funerals and the mortuary, which is wrong,” he said.
“Magarini had less than 10 cases in the first wave but now has 120. Malindi also had less than 10 but now has 93 cases. This is worrying and calls for concerted efforts to combat the pandemic,” he added.
He said testing is now being done in Malindi after Kemri scaled down the testing to concentrate on research.
“We only have the Malindi laboratory doing the testing which takes about five days. We are in talks with Kemri to see if they can increase the number of tests as they used to in the first wave. Delayed testing is a recipe for the spread of the virus,” he said.
Locals in Kilifi have literally thrown caution into the wind, breaking down all covid-19 protocol, a pointer to the surging number of covid-19 cases being reported in the county.
