Kenya’s health authorities have reached a reassuring milestone in their first brush with Ebola. Every one of the 122 people known to have been near the country’s only confirmed patient has now been identified, Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said on Sunday. Of those, 108 are quarantined and checked each day, and not one has fallen ill.
The patient was a 40-year-old Kenyan businessman who had lived in Congo for seven years. Reconstructions by the Africa CDC show he was sick for weeks while moving between Congolese towns, where clinics treated him for other complaints, including what was diagnosed as a skin infection. In early October he crossed into Uganda by road, flew from Entebbe to Nairobi and was taken by a relative to a private hospital. Only there did tests reveal the Bundibugyo strain, the same one behind Congo’s outbreak, which has killed more than 4,000 people this year. Within two days of reaching Kenya he was dead; a tightly controlled burial followed.
His journey exposed the weak spot of airport fever checks. Screeners in both Entebbe and Nairobi let him through, apparently because his temperature looked normal, perhaps thanks to medication. With an incubation period of up to 21 days, experts warn, a thermometer alone cannot stop the virus.
Since then Kenya has scaled up. Officials say more than 667,000 travellers have been screened at 26 entry points, and five laboratories can return results in six to twelve hours. Five hospitals across three cities, Nairobi, Eldoret and Mombasa among them, now hold 241 beds set aside for isolation. So far 293 suspect samples have been tested, and only the dead man’s was positive.
Borders, ports and airports stay open, and there is no lockdown. Duale asked anyone with symptoms to seek care quickly and to ignore rumours.
