Covid 19

Kenyans of different walks of life are struggling to maintain COVID-19 protocols, a move that is significantly affecting the return to normalcy in the country. Today, the country still has a national curfew from 10 pm to 4 am, in addition to social distancing, washing hands, and wearing masks at all times when in public.

Since the COVID-19 vaccines were approved, their continuous development and distribution have garnered immense global interest with many countries now in different stages of vaccination. There are now several vaccines that are in use. The first mass vaccination program started in early December 2020 and millions of vaccination doses have so far been administered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most traumatic and significant experiences of the century, with huge impacts on nations, societies, and individuals. The crisis has even changed the way we work. Even though most companies have “worst-case scenario” plans put in place in case of catastrophic events, not many if any were prepared for the kind of disruption caused by the coronavirus.

The Covid-19 period has undoubtedly been connected to so much misinformation and conspiracy theories about its origin, spread and vaccination and other linkages like 5G that has slowed down the response process.

I remember the days when all you required to have a serene travel experience was your money, a destination and audacity; then, we faced a pervasive Pandemic that brought us to a virtual standstill. We have been thrown into a state where we had to suppress most of our conventional ventures in a bid to recover and protect our very skin.

Kenya had just emerged from a moderate second wave of Covid-19 infections to a more devastating third wave. The country had announced a third wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in early March 2020. Then, the Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) had reported a 13 per cent average increase in deaths for Kenya.

The global lockdown of education institutions due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has caused major challenges to learners and the whole education system in general. To curb its spread, governments worldwide moved to suspend face-to-face teaching in schools, affecting some 95% of the world’s student population—the largest disruption to education in history. In the beginning, most African countries did not believe the virus would hit their nations and continued with their business as though nothing was happening. The coronavirus would later be reported in some African countries like Nigeria and South Africa, leading to widespread panic.

The COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly the biggest global health crisis of our time and perhaps the biggest challenge that the world has ever faced since World War Two. Despite the measures put across to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, the pandemic has been changing rapidly requiring different strategies to maintain the clinical preventative strategies, including immunization.

The covid-19 pandemic has immeasurably disrupted the economy in the last year including galvanizing never seen before industry-leading technology innovations.

A patient coughs violently, turning from side to side. Another is sitting still on the bed, an oxygen mask on his face. He seems to be barely conscious. A nurse sighs… “Ei, Covid is too much,” she says. She is wearing multiple face masks, a white N95 mask at the front.

With the spread of COVID-19, attempts have been made to come up with a solution to tackle the pandemic. One of those solutions is the development of vaccines. But vaccines alone will not address the pandemic without vaccination efforts. Therefore, ensuring access to the vaccines equitably and safely is vital to ensuring that COVID-19 prevention efforts are not in vain.

In the past few weeks, Kenya has registered an increase in the positivity rate of covid-19 up to about 22 per cent from 5 per cent in the previous period. Despite there being an introduction of the vaccine in the country, we have seen an increase in the number of citizens infected by the virus. Laxity among Kenyans is one of the reasons why there has been increasing in these numbers whereby most of them have begun to ignore the guidelines of the Ministry of Health in curbing the spread of the virus.