Kenya’s Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe has confirmed 12 new coronavirus cases in the country, five of them involving hotel workers.

Mr Kagwe told a media briefing that more than 450 samples were tested by Friday morning and that: “We have already got 12 positive cases and we have not finished the day”.

Travellers who arrived into the country days before a ban on international flights were quarantined in various hotels in the capital Nairobi.

Some of those in quarantine tested positive for coronavirus, but there is no indication that the hotel workers who tested positive on Friday worked in the hotels-turned-quarantine centres.

The total number of confirmed cases in the country now stands at 246.

Mr Mutahi said the government was scaling up testing capacity to ensure the contacts of those who turn positive are also tested so as to contain the spread of the virus.

The country has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew and and banned travel in and out of the capital, Nairobi, and three other coastal counties to stop the spread of coronavirus.