The plight of a family in Migori County whose 48 members have contracted Covid-19 has brought out the shocking extent to which the pandemic is ravaging communities. Already, one family member, Moses Osoro Ogola, a former senior official in the Ministry of Devolution succumbed to the disease and was buried on Wednesday in his home in God Ngoche village in the county.
According to the Star, the difficult situation was laid bare by the deceased sibling, Nakuru lawyer Gordon Ogola in a blood curdling narration on his social media pages.
The last one or so week has been harrowing to the Ogola family and clan. In a span of seven days we have 48 infections in the family including my 80-year-old mum. She has been struggling in the ICU for the last five days ogola added citing his 61-year-old brother Moses Osoro Ogola who died within 24 hours of admission.
Everyone including the step mum, her daughters-in-law, grandchildren, cousins and workers have all tested positive for Covid-19 after surrounding mother to Ogola.
In an interview with a popular media in Kenya on Tuesday, the lawyer narrated how the whole extended family spread across three generations, contracted the disease within one week. His mother was the first to contract the virus which soon spread within the family.
While the old woman was fighting for her life in Intensive Care Unit (ICU), his brother, Moses, got infected and died within 24 hours.
According to the family, the cortege was to leave Mater Hospital, Nairobi, yesterday morning for burial in Migori County.
The pain and anguish that the Ogola family is going through has laid bare the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic which is sweeping across the globe like a raging bush fire in harmattan season.
The family spokesman Ogola, said their farm workers were not spared as they also tested positive and are all in quarantine. He added that his biggest worry at the moment is how deep the virus has spread within families and communities in the countryside.
On Tuesday, Health Chief Administrative Secretary Rashid Aman described the behaviour of Kenyans disregarding the government’s containment measures as a recipe for disaster.
Speaking during the daily Covid-19 briefing, Aman announced that the number of confirmed positive cases had risen to 23,202 after 605 people tested positive from some 4,547 samples.
Six people succumbed to the disease within the same period bringing the total fatalities to 388 with over 500 recoveries.
The Ogola family tragedy comes barely two weeks after the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the surge in Covid-19 infections pointed to widespread community transmissions.
