Adapting Longstanding Public Health Collaborations between Government of Kenya and CDC Kenya in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2021

Abstract

Kenya's Ministry of Health (MOH) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Kenya (CDC Kenya) have maintained a 40-year partnership during which measures were implemented to prevent, detect, and respond to disease threats. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the MOH and CDC Kenya rapidly responded to mitigate disease impact on Kenya's 52 million residents. We describe activities undertaken jointly by the MOH and CDC Kenya that lessened the effects of COVID-19 during 5 epidemic waves from March through December 2021. Activities included establishing national and county-level emergency operations centers and implementing workforce development and deployment, infection prevention and control training, laboratory diagnostic advancement, enhanced surveillance, and information management. The COVID-19 pandemic provided fresh impetus for the government of Kenya to establish a national public health institute, launched in January 2022, to consolidate its public health activities and counter COVID-19 and future infectious, vaccine-preventable, and emerging zoonotic diseases.

Keywords: CDC; COVID-19; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Global Health Security Agenda; Kenya; PEPFAR; SARS; SARS-CoV-2; bilateral partnership; coronavirus; coronavirus disease; emerging disease outbreak response; global health security; respiratory infections; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; viruses; zoonoses.

Figure 1

Average number of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates in Kenya from April 1, 2020, through December 26, 2021, in a review of longstanding public health collaborations between the government of Kenya and CDC Kenya in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Kenya supports the Kenya Ministry of Health with COVID-19 data analysis and visualization. By December 26, 2021, Kenya had experienced 5 epidemic waves during July and November in 2020 and March, August, and December in 2021; a total of 282,554 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases, 5,361 related deaths, and a case fatality rate of 1.9% were reported. The graph shows the 7-day averages for the number of COVID-19 cases and positivity rates.

Figure 2

Locations of county EOCs supported by CDC Kenya in a review of longstanding public health collaborations between the government of Kenya and CDC Kenya in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By early 2021, the Kenya Ministry of Health, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Kenya, and World Health Organization began decentralizing Kenya’s emergency management. As of December 2021, a total of 17 county-led EOCs had been established in Kenya. Those 17 new EOCs established incident management systems and produced routine situation reports that guided the county-level response to the COVID-19 epidemic in Kenya. EOC, Emergency Operations Center.

Figure 3

Government applied nonpharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya from February 2020 through November 2021 in a review of longstanding public health collaborations between Government of Kenya and CDC Kenya in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples of nonpharmaceutical interventions utilized in Kenya include traveler quarantine, restrictions on mass gathering, school closures, mask mandates, curfews, and phased lifting of restrictions in response to case levels. The graph indicates the number of weekly cases and the period in which the specific nonpharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions were implemented.