President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday declined to lift restrictions put in place to combat the spread of the novel COVID-19.
Addressing the nation from State House, Nairobi, the head of state extended the cessation of movement order in Nairobi, Mombasa and Mandera counties by another 30 days.
For Kilifi and Kwale counties, the movement ban will lapse at 4 am, June 7.
Also on partial lockdown was Eastleigh and Old Town Mombasa. But starting 4 am, June 7, residents will be able to go back to normal.
On matters dusk till dawn curfew, President Uhuru extended the order by an extra 30 days but made changes to the timings.
Instead of starting at 7 pm, the curfew will begin at 9 pm. Further, the curfew will no longer run till 5 am but 4 am.
This the president said will enable Kenyans go back to work.
Public gatherings that have been limited to 15 persons only, the head of state extended the ban by 30 days.
“We must accept that we are not dealing with a right or wrong opinion we are caught in between two rights. Those who want to open the economy are right and those opposed to opening the economy are also right,” he said.
“We must speak truthfully to each other. The rate of infection in Kenya would have been very high had we not taken the measures we took.”
He also noted that reopening the economy would require the number of infections and deaths to be on a downward trend, a sufficiently prepared health care system and for the surveillance and contact tracing protocols to be fully operational.
This, he said, is not the case.
Uhuru also told Kenyans that relaxing the measures would see an upsurge in the number of infections and fatalities.
For instance, relaxing the restrictions by 40 percent would have seen the infections peak in November. Should they have been relaxed by 60%, Kenya would have recorded 450,000 infections and 40,000 deaths by October.
The President called upon the county governments to utilize the Sh5 billion grant to fully equip hospitals as virus cases rise.
Kenya’s virus cases shot to 2, 600 after 126 new infections were recorded in the last 24 hours.
He also confirmed four more deaths, bringing the number of fatalities to 83.
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