It has taken virus to expose weak health system

The admission by Health Cabinet Secretary that more difficult days await Kenyans is a clear testament that the coronavirus monster will have a substantial edge over our health systems. We have known all along that the novel coronavirus will devastate weak health systems but even so, the advanced and fairly robust and well-resourced European health systems have suffered a great deal. Epidemiologists are concerned because of the rapid rate of infections. In the US, the infections have risen 10 fold in a 7-day period. The rate of infection in UK is doubling every three days. In Kenya, our official infection rate is still low, because we haven’t started doing targeted mass-testing yet.

The European health systems have been overwhelmed already. The mortality rate due to Covid-19 in Italy was devastating as it lost over 2,500 people in four weeks, with over 32,000 confirmed cases, their systems were struggling. Not enough beds, equipment and with an increased number of health workers quarantined because of the infection, one of the best public health system in the western world could not do anything to prevent the devastation.