NAIROBI, Kenya

Kenya’s Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe warned on Wednesday that the nation is at the beginning of a fourth coronavirus wave, citing increased infections.

Kagwe told county governments to ensure that they have sufficient intensive care unit (ICU) beds and oxygen to deal with the new cases.

“I would like to appeal to the county governments to start ensuring that there is sufficient oxygen in each county. Of particular importance is ensuring that not only is there oxygen but the oxygen has been properly piped. We can already see an increase in demand of ICU beds [and] we can see an increase in demand of oxygen requirements,” he said.

The Health Ministry said the Delta variant is now dominant in Kenya.

This comes as the UK donated 817,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Kenya.

More vaccines are set to arrive in Kenya next week and Kagwe said: ”Kenya will receive 1,760,000 doses of Pfizer from the US government, 410,000 doses of AstraZeneca from the UK government, 235,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Greece and 55,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Latvia as part of bilateral donations.”

A total of 1,006 people tested positive on Wednesday for the virus in Kenya from a sample size of 5,584 tested in the last 24 hours.

The positivity rate is now 18.0%. Confirmed cases are at 199,941 and cumulative tests conducted stand at 2,109,581.

Thirteen people have also died, all being late deaths reported after conducting facility record audits.