Policy Brief No. 03 of 2022-2023 on Sustaining Kenya’s Economic Recovery Amidst Uncertainties of COVID-19

Abstract

On 12th March 2020, Kenya reported the first confirmed case of COVID-19. By end of December 2020, it had experienced two peaks of positivity rate. In March 2021, the government rolled out a National Vaccine Deployment Plan that aimed to vaccinate 26 million Kenyans by 2022. By end of December 2021, over 10 million people had been vaccinated, supported by an accelerated vaccine rollout plan. On 15th December 2021, the first case of new variant Omicron was reported in the country. When COVID-19 struck, various measures were instituted to manage the spread and protect the most vulnerable in the society. Among these measures were mobility restrictions, which included requirements to work from home; restrictions on public events including social, business, and political gatherings; controls on public transport, including the capacity carried and ensuring wearing of masks; domestic movement restrictions including dusk-to dawn curfew and cessation of movement to and from counties with higher positivity rate; school closures; and restrictions on international travel. In August 2021, Kenya reopened schools and vacated existing controls on carrying capacity for public passenger transport. In October 2021, the Government vacated the dusk-to-dawn curfew that had hitherto controlled local movement within the country. Since then, all the mobility restrictions have been vacated. That said, the Omicron variant saw some countries especially in Europe and China reinstate mobility restrictions. This raised fear that should the situation intensify with Omicron, or any other variants emerge, Kenya could reinstate, some if not all, of the vacated mobility restrictions. This policy brief examines how mobility restrictions imposed in Kenya affected the COVID-19 caseload and positivity rate, and economic performance, in drawing lessons for any possible re-introduction of vacated mobility restrictions should new COVID-19 variants emerge