Kenyan Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe on Wednesday confirmed the detection of the country’s first case of Omicron variant of COVID-19, reported News 18.
“We have detected the Omicron variant among passengers in airports,” said Kagwe, without revealing when and where the variant was first identified.
He said the new coronavirus variant was detected among travelers- two Kenyan and one South African- at airports.
The Kenyan health minister said people who are hospitalized with COVID-19 in the country were still suffering from the Delta variant of the disease, but Omicron cases are expected to quickly rise.
He told reporters in Mombasa that Omicron might soon become the dominant variant in the country.
Notably, the number of coronavirus cases reported in Kenya has been increasing in recent days. The Kenyan health ministry said on Tuesday that the current positivity rate stood at 11.5 percent.
Kagwe said the government is not going to take any action in a hurry in response to the Omicron detection in the country, saying any measures taken would be based on science.
“From where we sit, variants will come and variants will go, the decisions we make as a government in order to protect our people must also be measured and calculated,” he said.
Only 3.27 million Kenyans, or 12 of the adult population, have been fully vaccinated so far. The Kenyan government has plans to vaccinate about 10 million people by December 25, and 27 million by the end of 2022.
In related news, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday issued a warning that the Omicron coronavirus variant was spreading at an unprecedented rate and urged countries to act swiftly to rein in transmission and protect their health systems.
According to the WHO, the new, highly mutated variant, which was first detected in South Africa last month, has been reported in 77 countries so far.
