The World Health Organisation has pointed out that Ghana is among ten countries fueling the surge of COVID-19 cases in Africa.
According to the WHO, if people who are not infected are not protected from those who are infected to curtail the spread of the virus, about 190000 lives on the continent will be snuffed out.
The WHO’s Technical Officer for Africa, Dr. Mary Stephen in a virtual health forum on COVID-19 indicated that Ghana is among some countries driving the number of cases upward.
“In Africa, ten countries are driving this outbreak. Of course, we know that South Africa is reporting the highest number of cases but Nigeria and Ghana are also part of these ten countries.”
Dr. Mary Stephen said the continent has to build up its capacity and establish immediate measures to stop this health crisis.
“If we don’t rump up our public health and those physical measures we might continue to see additional cases on the continent. So we need to rump up all the capacities for detection, testing, isolation treatment, and contact tracing including the preventive measures by the communities.”
The Global Health Expert entreated the African populace to strictly adhere to the various precautionary measures as their respective countries take steps to fight the virus.
According to her, “we all have a partner responsibility” in curbing this virus.
As of Monday, July 6, 2020, 21:40 GMT Confirmed coronavirus cases in Africa stood at 481,060. The number who had recovered were 230,957 while 11,497 people have died. At that time Ghana’s case count was 20085. Source: Africa CDC; Johns Hopkins; NCoVAfrica.
Today, Tuesday, July 7, 2020, the Ghana Health Service indicates Ghana’s confirmed cases are 21,077 with 16,070 recoveries while 129 lives have been lost.
The government has been making the point that the reason why the country’s number of cases is rising is because of the increasing testing and enhanced contract tracing.
However, Dr. Mary Stephen has dismissed this claim.
“The number of cases you will see depends on the kind of transmission pattern. If you have community transmission, you will pick quite a number of tests. Even if you do not test; they will eventually be presented at the hospitals or as community death,” she said.
The WHO Technical Officer for Africa further said, “If you have a country that is reporting a sporadic number of cases, no matter how much you will test, there will still be so many cases. So it depends on the kind of transmission in the country.”
Regardless of the spike in the number of cases in Ghana, authorities have approved the mass registration of citizens to create a new voters’ register for the upcoming general elections in December this year.
There have been divergent views as to the worthiness of this process. But Ghanaian authorities have pointed out that the Constitutional requirement of the impending elections and the importance of a new voter roll to the democratic dispensation of the country makes this exercise imperative.
In that vein, the Electoral Commission has until 6th August 2020 to complete this exercise.
