Accra and Kumasi in the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions respectively, have been identified as the epicentres of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Ghana
Minister for Health Kwaku Agyeman-Manu announced this at a media briefing in Accra yesterday.
He said following case management by health officials, “what we have identified so far is that, we can describe two areas in Ghana now as our own epicentres. Accra and Tema together and Kumasi”.
“In Accra, we have deployed 98 field officers, epidemiologists and community health nurses who have been trained in tracing people. In Kumasi, we have deployed about 50 trained people who are also doing contact tracing”.
He confirmed that 25 new coronavirus cases were recorded as of yesterday, bringing the total number infected persons to 52 in the country.
Mr Agyeman-Manu has therefore urged Ghanaians to assist health officials in identifying persons who might be at risk of the pandemic in a bid to tackle the horizontal spread of the virus in the country.
“The advice I will give now by this evidence is the fact that, all those our brothers and sisters who have come in (from abroad) we should assist them to put themselves in self-quarantine if we haven’t tracked them yet. We should talk to health authorities in the areas where they live to send teams to serve them such that we can protect the population against community spread that we have seen in the country at the moment.”
The 25 new cases were confirmed among the 1,030 people who are under mandatory quarantine in the country after arriving at the Kotoka International Airport hours to the deadline for the closure of the country’s borders.
According Mr Agyeman-Manu, 611 people out of the 1,030 people in self-quarantine have so far been tested for the Coronavirus and only 185 of the number have their results released.
He said his Ministry is yet to receive the remaining results.
Cases in Ghana
Since the outbreak of the disease in Ghana, the majority of the cases have been recorded in Accra with a few of them confirmed in Tema and Kumasi.
Although most of the cases are imported in nature, there are also indications that community spreading has begun in Ghana.
The majority of the infected persons are Ghanaians who arrived in the country from other parts of the world. Only a few are foreigners.
Over the weekend, the Lebanese patient among those confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus in Ghana died.
The deceased was a 61-year-old man, reported to a health facility in Kumasi with a fever and cough.
He reportedly had other critical underlying health conditions before his death.
Another patient was reported dead on Monday, March 24.
However, details of the death have not been provided by authorities.
Minister for Information Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah has cautioned that Ghana was likely to record more cases of COVID-19 in the coming weeks.
He entreated Ghanaians to take all safety measures and protocols seriously to prevent the spread of the disease.
