For the past ten days or so, Kenya has seen a significant increase in the ratio of new Covid-19 virus positives to swabs performed.
While when the country observed more or less strict rules, such as curfews from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. and bar closures, the percentages were between 3 and 5%, they now fluctuate between 10 and 14. All much more alarming, not because there are so many serious cases in the country (there are less than fifty patients in intensive care in the country and almost all of them had important pathologies before contracting the virus) or because more people die, but because the hospitals come back to fill up with symptomatic citizens and must in any case respond to the request for examinations, treatment and possibly hospitalization, which even in the presence of mild symptoms, must be carried out in special isolation wards.
This is why the National Association of Doctors returned last Saturday to ask, as at the beginning of the emergency, for help from hotels that are currently closed or not working at all. There are already about twenty facilities in and around Nairobi that have responded to the call to serve as isolation and home care facilities for Covid-19 patients.
However, there is still a very light atmosphere among the people.
Only in the upper districts of Nairobi, where the risks of a widespread pandemic could seriously affect the economy of large companies and limit the country's growth, is there a sense of daily respect for the rules. It is enough to go to the densely populated neighbourhoods of the urban belt and of course to the slums, which are disappearing masks and social distances (in places with very high urban density), and with the shortage of water and lack of money to buy soap, hygiene is also going to be blessed.
Poverty tends to set Covid-19 aside even in rural areas and on the coast, where, however, there is one element that continues to bode well: the large open spaces that are practically a guarantee of social distance. In these areas, among other things, it is much easier to identify hotbeds, because they are often the result of limited and well known episodes in the surrounding areas: a funeral with mass participation, the rally of a politician with a large following, a news item or a protest that brings many people together.
On the coast the increase of the last few days is also due to the good influx of local holidaymakers coming from Nairobi. Many of them continue to respect the restrictions as if they were in the capital, others let themselves go to the festive atmosphere and different habits, driven also by what they see around them. "There is no Crown" they say on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and instead there is one, even if it is low in viral load and protected from great distances.
This is why sea destinations still keep and remain open: distances and the freedom to move without having to pile up are fundamental.
For the rest, people's awareness is unlikely to increase. Their philosophy of life is well known and the economic conditions for those who live in equilibrium on the threshold of survival are far more important than any disease, even more serious and more deadly than the Coronavirus (because there are some here, and the numbers say so). As World Health Organization number 1 in Kenya recently said, Patrick Amoth, "we hope you don't have to watch people die on the street to convince yourself that you have to respect the rules".
We still do not believe that Kenya is taking this risk, for the reasons listed above and because often "what you don't know doesn't happen".