The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, created to help speed up global, equitable, and lasting solutions to the pandemic, has applauded Ghana’s gains in the fight against COVID-19.
The commission named Ghana among nations that have used their meagre financial resources and under-resourced health systems to achieve excellence in preventing the further spread of COVID-19.
In order of best performance, countries have been classified as suppression, low and moderate while worst performers have been categorised as high and very high.
Ghana is among 16 countries classified as having low transmission, the second best performing category.
The rest in that category are Cote d’Ivoire, Hungary, Tunisia, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Estonia, Indonesia, Kenya, Norway, Japan, Slovakia, Lithuania, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria.
From the information, Ghana is doing better than Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Russian Federation and Italy, which are in moderate transmission category, while South Africa and Malta in high transmission and the United States of America, Israel, Spain and Brazil in very high transmission category.
Mortality rates vary by two orders of magnitude, from zero or near-zero deaths per million per day in the countries in suppression, to more than one death per million per day in the very high transmission countries.
With a little push, Ghana could rise to be classified among nations in suppression state as far as the fight against COVID-19 is concerned.
The Lancet COVID-19 Commission classifies countries according to the number of new cases per day per million population, because this is the most straight forward measure of rate of transmission of the virus.
Lancet COVID-19 Commission classifies a country as being in suppression state if there are five or fewer new cases per day in August, provided that the rate of testing is ample, which it defines as at least 20 tests per new case.
The Lancet COVID-19 Commission also classifies a country as having low transmission if there are 10 or fewer new cases per million population per day but the country is not in suppression.
It also classifies a country as having moderate transmission with 10-50 new cases per million per day.
Furthermore, high transmission is 50-100 new cases per million per day, and very high transmission is 100 or more new cases per million population per day.
The commission, chaired by Prof. Jeffrey David Sachs, was set up on July 9, 2020 to, among other things, assist governments, civil society and UN institutions to respond effectively to COVID-19.
It is to help speed up global, equitable, and lasting solutions to the pandemic.
The commissioners are leaders of health science and delivery, business, politics and finance from across the world.
The commissioners joined this effort in the shared belief that effective solutions can be found on the basis of global cooperation, social justice, sustainable development, and good governance that builds on public trust.
On the occasion of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, in a statement published online on September 14, 2020, placed Ghana among the highly recognised countries that are making great progress in the fight against COVID-19 despite challenges in its health system, as well as funding.
Prof Jeffrey Sachs, who shared some aspects of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission statement via teleconference during the launch of the one million personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline health workers by the Millennium Promise Alliance (MPA) in Accra, lauded Ghana’s efforts in the fight against the pandemic.
“The pandemic is stopped because of the trust by the population, by people following the principles of public”.
