Contact tracing has helped discover 50 Tullow oil workers who have tested positive for coronavirus after coming into contact with other workers who had earlier tested positive for coronavirus.

Tullow Oil Ghana on Tuesday, May 26, 2020, in a statement, confirmed that two of its contract staff had contracted the virus.

The contact tracing exercise that was subsequently carried out helped discover 50 more workers who came into contact with the first two and have now tested positive for the virus. “There were two cases that were confirmed and we did some contact tracing and about 50 of them are positive and they are asymptomatic,” the Western Regional Director of Health, Dr Jacob Mahama, said in an interview.

Can Tullow really protect the health of its workers?

Tullow earlier assured it had been following strict quarantine procedures for all personnel working offshore including two weeks of government-approved quarantine and also said it is dedicated to obeying all the precautions as advised by the World Health Organisation, WHO and GHS to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in their workspace.

“Tullow wishes to assure all stakeholders that the health and safety of our staff, contractors, sub-contractors, and our host communities remain our priority” and “has followed strict quarantine procedures for all personnel working offshore including two weeks of government-approved quarantine. We will be assessing further actions that may be available to reduce the risk of infection” the energy firm said.

The Western Region currently has 395 known infections. Ghana’s coronavirus case count has risen to 7,616 with Greater Accra and Ashanti regions having the highest case, that is, 5,331 and 1,160 cases respectively.

More details to come soon.