The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said the country has reached its peak in terms of COVID-19 infections.
According to the Director of Public Health at the Service, Dr. Badu-Sarkodie, the number of cases will start declining depending on how well citizens abide by the prevention protocols.
At a press briefing in Accra on Tuesday, Dr. Badu Sarkodie said officials are keenly monitoring the numbers regarding the case count.
“We realize that with a sharp rise and the cases that we have, we see that as a country we seem to be on top of the peak. We are at the stage to decline. That is the observation now. The declination will depend on how we adhere to the various preventive steps that have been enumerated. We are not out of the woods yet. We are at the peak of the curve, but yet to come down, and we urge Ghanaians to adhere to the preventive measures put in place so that we can see an early decline in infections,” he said.
On Monday, May 5, 2020, 550 new cases were announced which took the national case count of confirmed cases to 2,719.
There are also 294 recoveries and 18 deaths.
Out of the 2,407 active cases in Ghana, 88 percent are in very healthy conditions. About five of them are however moderately ill.
So far, Ghana has tested 130,502 suspected cases. The positivity rate is said to be 2.01 percent while the mortality rate has been calculated as 0.66 percent.
At the same briefing, the President’s advisor on health, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare attributed the country’s low COVID-19 mortality rate to what he termed as government’s pragmatic strategies in dealing with the coronavirus scarce.
“Our strategy has been to chase the virus through tracing, testing, isolation, and treatment. Through isolation, we take the positive case out of the system, thereby ending its potential of transmission to other people.”
The Greater Accra Region is still leading the chart with 2,332 cases, followed by the Ashanti and Eastern Regions with 124 and 94 cases respectively.
Noguchi backlog cleared
The Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Ghana’s largest lab testing for coronavirus in the country has completed testing the backlog of about 18,000 samples, giving it room to now test and report on samples within 24 hours.
This is according to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye.
Making a presentation at a Minister for Information press briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Kumah Aboagye said the last batch of the backlog was cleared over the weekend and the results are part of the new 550 cases confirmed in the last Ghana Health Service update.
“As of now, we have recorded 2,719 cases across the country. This covers all the cases that were diagnosed since the first case was diagnosed on the 12th of March. Since the last update, we’ve had an increase of about 550 cases and this has come out of the nearly 18,000 tests conducted in the last few days over the weekend, wiping out the entire backlog at Noguchi,” he said.
KCCR backlogs to be cleared by Thursday
Meanwhile, the Director of Virology at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Prof. William Ampofo says the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research has about 1,982 samples it is yet to test.
He, however, added that they are hopeful that all that backlog will be cleared by Thursday.
“I just crosschecked with Professor Richard Philip at KCCR and he has 1,982 samples awaiting testing, it was 3,500 yesterday [Monday] so they worked all night. He expects that by Thursday, all backlogs will be done,” he said.
When the backlogs are cleared and more testing labs come onboard, Ghana is expected to be able to test and report on cases faster than is being currently done.
Source: Citinewsroom.com
