Kenya has detected its first three cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, the country’s health minister said on Wednesday. “We have at least three cases so far, and have a lot of other samples that we are sequencing,” said Mutahi Kagwe.
He said Omicron was detected among travellers — two Kenyan and one South African — at airports, but did not specify when and where in Kenya the cases were detected.
Kagwe said those hospitalised with Covid-19 in Kenya were still suffering from the Delta variant of the disease, but cases of Omicron were expected to quickly rise.
“It is just a matter of time before Omicron becomes the dominant variant,” he told reporters in Mombasa.
The East African country has seen a surge in Covid infections in recent days after a lull lasting several months.
On Tuesday, the health ministry said the number of tests returning positive results stood at 11.5 percent — a roughly ten-fold rise on a week earlier.
Kagwe ruled out taking “knee-jerk reactions” in…