Kenya has recorded its first death resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement, the country’s Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe announced that a 66-year-old male patient who had tested positive for the Covid-19 succumbed to the virus on Thursday afternoon.

According to Kagwe, the patient had been suffering from Diabetes and had been admitted at Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi and was in the Intensive Care Unit.

“The man who was suffering from diabetes had arrived in the country on March 13, 2020, from South Africa via Swaziland,” Kagwe said in the statement.

CS Kagwe announced the sad news only hours after the government announced the good news on the country’s first patient to recover from the highly contagious virus and had been discharged.

According to Health Director General Patrick Amoth, the patient released was the second case that was confirmed to have coronavirus in Kenya.

This is after he underwent a series of tests approved by the Ministry of Health that requires the patient to have two negative tests of the virus after treatment.

Health CAS Dr Mercy Mwangangi confirmed three more people had tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 31.

Dr Mwangangi said the three new confirmed cases are female, all Kenyans and aged between 30 to 61 years.

She added that the new cases are spread out in five counties including Nairobi, Kajiado, Kilifi, Mombasa and Kwale and are close contacts of the previously confirmed cases; two from Kilifi and one from Nairobi.

Contact-tracing for new potential patients is ongoing with the number of people being sought by the government for screening and potential isolation as efforts to contain the viral disease intensifying across the country.

The world has so far registered 499,935 cases of coronavirus, with more than 121, 211 patients (24.2 per cent) recovered, and the number of fatalities rose to more than 22,323 on Thursday.