The Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research has denied reports it has recommended a lockdown to the government as one of the measures to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Speaking at a press conference held at the Ministry of Information, Professor William Ampofo, the Head of the Virology at Noguchi said his institute “has not officially presented a viewpoint to the government of Ghana.”
He, however, said Noguchi along with members fo the Ghana Arts Academy for Science “have presented a position paper to the government with recommendations for consideration.”
The details of this paper are unknown.
The earlier claims stemmed from a report from the Daily Graphic after an interview with the Noguchi’s Director, Professor Abraham Annan.
Calls for a partial to complete lockdown have come from the Bureau of Public Safety, the Trades Union Congress among other observers.
An international law and governance analyst, Kwame Mfodwo, however, warned that Ghana risks extreme starvation should it go into a complete lockdown.
He expects some form of lockdown though, given the nature of the pandemic.
“[A lockdown] is inevitable. The key issue is that we have to allow a lockdown that is defined and matches our context. I will say that, yes, we’ll actually go in for a lockdown. But as we sit here now, we can’t go into lockdown now in our current state because we can’t maintain it for more than three days or a week because people don’t have food and they will starve,” he said on Citi TV‘s The Point of View.
Ghana currently has 52 cases of the virus.
The most drastic measures taken so far are the closure of all the countries borders.
The 1,030 people who arrived at the Kotoka International Airport hours to the deadline for the closure of the country’s borders are under mandatory quarantine.
Twenty-five of Ghana’s cases were from people who were under mandatory quarantine.
Over 600 people out of the 1030 people in self-quarantine have so far been tested for the Coronavirus and only 185 of the number have their results released.
