As school partially reopened on Monday amid a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, the government has said that it is closely monitoring the situation.
On Wednesday, Acting Director-General in the Ministry of Health Dr Patrick Amoth.
Amoth during an interactive session with Kenyans on Twitter said that they are monitoring the pattern of the virus now that school have opened.
He added that they plan on conducting random sampling in schools to avert a crisis.
“The decision to reopen schools in phases was a delicate choice based on surveillance which will continue while schools are open. We have given special attention to teachers, students and staff with pre-existing conditions to avoid infection within the schools.
“We also plan to do random sampling in schools to establish the rate of infection in schools if at all,” he stated.
In scientific terms, he said that the Grade 4, Standard Eight and Form Four candidates who are already back in school have “lowest attack rate. Therefore we look forward to lessons that will be learnt in these first few days of phased opening before deciding whether to continue with the low numbers or full operation.”
He defended the decision to have some children go back to school saying that it was averting social disasters such as sexual and gender-based violence, suicide, anxiety and depression which have been consuming a lot of learners back at home.
