Foreign Affairs PS Macharia Kamau, who tested positive for Covid-19 last week has taken on government over billions meant to fight the pandemic.
PS Kamau was forced to hand over his duties to political and diplomatic secretary Ambassador Tom Amollo as he went into isolation.
According to a report by The Star on Thursday July 30, 2020, PS Macharia regretted that the government’s contact tracing has collapsed.
The local daily reported that there is no access to proper care and even more tragic is that there is no medical insurance cover for the virus, as per PS Macharia’s observation.
The PS has questioned the country’s management of the pandemic and wondered what the billions spent so far have achieved.
“For all the billions that have been spent on this campaign, it’s hard to imagine that at the point of contact where the disease actually happens, there is no system to make sure that we have access to proper care and the proper contact tracing is actually done to keep track of those who are not well or maybe infecting others,” Macharia is quoted to have said in a WhatsApp group of top government officials.
Macharia said after he tested positive, he quickly informed his contacts about his condition, but to his surprise, none of them have been contacted by the government.
The PS said no one has been in touch with him about contact tracing.
He said he has had malaria-like symptoms – hot and cold flushes and intense dizziness as well as disorientation, although he is yet to go to hospital.
Days before the virus arrived in Kenya, Macharia termed as “short-sighted, careless and xenophobic” Kenyans who raised the red flag about the government’s handling of the pandemic.
He hit out at critics saying coronavirus is “not the first global epidemic and is not the most deadly”.
This was after a Southern China Airline arrived with 239 passengers in Nairobi from Guangzhou – the then second-most affected region in China – triggering an immediate uproar from Kenyans.
