Kenya on Wednesday confirmed that it has detected five cases of the Indian COVID-19 variant.

Ministry of Health acting Director-General Dr. Patrick Amoth said that the five cases are all Indian nationals, who arrived in Kisumu on Thursday last week. They are all currently quarantined.

He said this on a day when Kenya recorded 489 new COVID-19 cases, bring the total number of cases in the country to 161,393.

20 deaths have also been reported in the last 24 hours. The cumulative number of fatalities in the country now stands at 2,825.

A total of 900,459 persons have so far been vaccinated against COVID-19.

(With input from Kenya's Ministry of Health)