Kisumu County is on a high alert following an upsurge in COVID-19 numbers.
Officials are worried that Kisumu is recording worrying average infections and fatalities, with health facilities already over-stretched.
And now, the County’s chief professor Anyang Nyongó has announced a raft of measures in a bid to contain the spread of the virus in the lakeside city.
There will be a fresh crackdown on Public Service Vehicles and boda boda operators flouting COVID-19 protocols.
The county has also directed the public to bury their loved ones within 72 hours, with morgues ordered not to keep bodies for more than 48 hours. And that bodies which will not be collected within the timelines shall be disposed of without notification.
Prof. Nyongo has also banned physical prayers in places of worship including churches, mosques and temples.
The near-crisis situation in Kisumu coming just days after the lakeside city hosted 58th Madaraka Day celebrations, an event that some health experts warned would be a COVID-19 super spreader.
The scale up measures to control spread of the virus also comes after the deadly and highly mutative Indian variant of the respiratory disease was detected in the area.
At the same time, Kenya has recorded 148 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours.
According to the Ministry of Health, the new infections were obtained from a sample size of 2,163 tests and with a positivity rate of 6.8 percent.
The new cases push cumulative cases to 172,639.
21 more COVID-19 related deaths have been reported pushing cumulative fatalities to 3,308.
So far, 975,835 persons have been vaccinated against covid-19 countrywide, with at least 13,194 of them having received their second dose of the AstraZenecca vaccine.
