The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, has revealed that there is no policy in place to turn away people with non-covid cases from public hospitals.
Responding to reports on individuals being fended off these hospitals, he revealed that, the other cases which are non-Covid related are also prioritized.
“All facilities have designated cases for COVID. You don’t turn your entire ward into a COVID space so I don’t know how that could happen and we have not given such a policy.
“We still have other cases which are equally of concern that we are dealing with”.
Commenting on the hikes in COVID cases and its impact on health facilities, Dr. Kuma-Aboagye assured that hospitals handling coronavirus cases were not overstretched.
“We have an increasing number but it is a dynamic situation. Some get discharged. Some get admitted”.
The Director-General, however, admitted the country is at “a point we never reached before but as we speak now, people are getting admitted and people are getting discharged,” citing the main challenge of limited space in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs).
“Where we have a challenge is the care for the critical cases where people occupy ICU beds for a longer time”.
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye further emphasized that behavioural change by strictly adhering to COVID-19 protocols will be relevant in reducing the growing numbers.
Meanwhile, Infectious disease and public health analyst, Dr. John Amoasi has called for the reimposition of a ban on public gathering.
In an effort to reel in the growing number in COVID-19 active cases in the country, he reckoned it a necessary act to protect the public.
Touching on proposals by the government to enforce tighter restrictions in a bid to offset the current spike, Dr. Amoasi who also doubles as a Senior Research Fellow at the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research (KCCR), consented to the idea that it will curtail the spread of the virus.
“I think that calls being made especially by the GMA are perfectly legitimate. This is not rocket science. It’s been straightforward to restrict the groups and close association of people. But this should be done by a different strategy.
“We at the population level and the community level activities, we have tried with the individual strategy through the mask-wearing, washing of hands. This is clearly not enough. Where we are right now in this pandemic considering the fact that we have more rate of increase than our earlier peak, it does not make sense if we do not introduce strong measures. It is a very painful decision to make, but I think we are there. The earlier we take them the better for all of us”.
Dr. John Amoasi
There has been an increase in infections with 616 new cases, which moves the country up to 3,813 active cases.
The GHS has recorded 377 deaths from the virus out of 62,751 confirmed cases whilst 58,561 persons have recovered or been discharged after infections.
