Kenya Fights Coronavirus

KENYA

No Easy Fix

Kenya has extended a nightly curfew for another month and banned alcohol sales to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The measures reflected a need to curb reckless behavior, especially among young people, that has led to a surge in virus cases, officials said. “The harsh reality my friends is that we are at war. At war with an invisible enemy who is relentless,” said President Uhuru Kenyatta in an address covered by Al Jazeera.

He stopped short of fully closing down the country, however, noted Reuters. “We cannot have a policeman at every street and in every village to enforce the rules,” Kenyatta said. “We need, as citizens, to hold ourselves and one another accountable.”

But some critics are wondering who is going to hold the government accountable as it curtails freedom of movement and civil rights to manage the public health emergency.

Citizens have submitted a flood of complaints about brutality among police enforcing the curfew, the New York Review of Books wrote. One death that arose from the curfew involved a young woman who slipped down a ravine as she sought to elude police. She fell into a river and drowned. Another was the shooting of a 13-year-old boy, Yassin Moyo, who was on the balcony of his house watching police enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew, one of at least 95 cases of killings they say were linked to police this year since the pandemic broke out, the Washington Post reported.

Pregnant women, meanwhile, can’t find functioning public transportation during curfew hours to get to hospitals even as they brave exposure to police on the streets, the Associated Press reported. Many opt to have their children at home with midwives but many fear needing more medical attention if something goes wrong during birth as well as hygiene conditions: They worry the midwife might be unwittingly spreading Covid-19.

Many Kenyans feel as if the government has abandoned them in a time of need, the Washington Post explained. Pessimism has set in. Kenyatta unveiled a coronavirus plan to run from February through April. Officials appeared to have abandoned it once the first case was registered in March.

Now, the education system, which includes private schools that operate on fees, is threatening to collapse, CGTN reported. Two million children are likely to shift into already overcrowded public schools as a result. Years of underfunding the health system are also taking a toll as hospitals struggle to care for patients without sufficient equipment, added the Conversation. Clean water is difficult to come by for the poor.

Kenyatta loosened restrictions he imposed in the early days of the pandemic because they caused the economy to shrink. A locust infestation didn’t help, either. Meanwhile, the country is considering waiving the two-week quarantine rule for tourists in a bid to revive commerce and bring in more foreign cash.

The money might help, but the world is still in the early days of a crisis that is going to take more than tourism to fix.