Hotel professionals laud State over mandatory quarantine

CS Health Mutahi Kagwe at past press briefing over corona virus

The Association of Hotel Professionals -Kenya (AHP-K) has commended the Ministry of Health for putting in place well-structured measures to deal with a host of people returning from abroad in mandatory quarantine in designated hotels and government institutions in Nairobi.

The Association's chairman, Robert Kinyua said that all the initial teething problems that had affected the smooth layout of the process has now been dealt with.

''We now have a well organised and coordinated quarantine process in place. All the facilities offering quarantine have been provided with safety gowns and other equipment like gloves, masks, and sanitisers,'' Kinyua said.

Kinyua who is a director of Clarion Hotel that is one of the designated hotels said that the Ministry has deployed nurses, clinical officers, and adequate security personnel to host establishments.

He added that they are now in a position to host more of such guests as they are well equipped.

''We all have a role to play as a nation to ensure we contain Covid-19 from spreading further in our country,'' Kinyua said. 

Last week, the government issued directives to all arriving passengers in Nairobi through the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to be put on mandatory quarantine for 14 days and issued a raft of guidelines on how they should be handled.

The government put an estimate of close to 2000 people, the majority of whom are Kenyans returning from abroad into mandatory quarantine at their cost.

Among the group includes close to 100 young Kenyan seafarers who work aboard cruise ships that have now stopped cruising over the virus pandemic.

Health Cabinet Secretary, Mutahi Kagwe had announced that all those coming into the country be subjected to mandatory quarantine to help contain the spread of the virus.

All guests, the Ministry ordered to be placed in well-ventilated rooms with open windows and open doors and their movements limited.

The Ministry guidelines discouraged the sharing of rooms.

Hosting facilities as per the Ministry guidelines were supposed to submit to the Ministry details on the guests including their room numbers.