A 100-year-old Kenyan has become the oldest person in the country to contract Covid-19, according to the Health Ministry.
The centenarian is among the 247 new Covid-19 positive cases reported in the country on Friday, raising the total number of infections to 7,188. All the new patients except five are Kenyan nationals.
164 of the new Covid-19 sufferers are male and 83 are female with the youngest being one-year-old while the oldest is aged 100.
At the same time, the tally of Covid-19 recoveries increased by 39 to 2,148 while the death toll stands at 154 after two succumbed.
The ministry has warned that the country could continue to register an increased number of infections up to December this year even as it emerged that over 2.5 million Kenyans could have been exposed to the virus.
A study carried out by the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and Wellcome Trust estimates that 2.6 million Kenyans are exposed to Covid-19.
In the study, blood samples were collected from various parts of the country, and upon testing, it was established that there could be a huge gap between confirmed cases and the number of people exposed to the virus.
“There is a large gap between the confirmed cases identified by rapid response teams in testing and tracing and the number of individuals in the population that we believe has been exposed, based on antibody data,” the study says.
In Nairobi, more than 550,000 residents could be suffering from the virus, according to the study. The study adds that an estimated 510,000 people in the Rift Valley, Nyanza (490,000), Central (370,000), Eastern (320,000), Western (220,000), and Coast (200,000) could have been exposed to the virus.
The study further established that 78 percent of the patients are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. From the 2,535 blood samples collected from different parts of the country, Kemri developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay which focused on spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
