Dr Badu Sarkodie, Director of Public Health, Ghana Health Service, has disclosed that Ghana will soon see a decline in its Coronavirus cases. At the moment, the total confirmed cases in Ghana stand at 2,719, with 18 deaths. The country is left with 1,980 samples with the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research (KCCR), which is awaiting results tomorrow, with Noguchi having no backlog.
Taking his turn at a media briefing on Tuesday, May 5, 2020, Dr Badu Sarkodie, who was responding to a question on the decline of the cases, gave some encouraging remarks as people get frightened at the increasing rate of the cases.
“The first confirmed case in the country was on March 12. And now, with the cases that we have, clearly, we seem, as a country, to be on top of the peak and we are at the stage to decline. That is the observation now,” he said.
Nonetheless, Dr Sarkodie swiftly added that the decline will depend on how the various preventive etiquettes are adhered to, stressing that “we are not off the hook yet.”
Explaining how cases are recorded, through to a peak and a decline, Dr Badu Sarkodie said that “every day cases recorded are put on a chart, and then clearly you get the case being built, you reach a peak, and then get to a decline, and then finally to zero.”
However, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, giving an update on the case count, said Ghana is waiting for test results of nearly 2,000 samples from the KCCR, which, he added, will be ready by tomorrow. For now, there is no backlog at Noguchi, he noted.
He indicated that the nature of the disease has a high infection rate, but low death rate, reiterating a point the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, made that the disease would stay with the country for some time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the nature of this disease is such that it has a very high infection rate, but low death. So, what it means is that this disease may stay with us as the Minister said, and that we need to be ready until we discover an effective vaccine,” he asserted.
On his part, the Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr Nsiah Asare, explained the curve in cases to mean whether the health system was being overstretched.
He said that if many people going to the hospital are dying, then the health system will be overstretched, but that is not the case in Ghana.
“In Ghana, our health system is not overstretched. As I said, about 88% of the people who are positive [for Covid-19] are well. As we speak now, for the 2,719, five people are moderately ill, and I think, as we speak now, there’s nobody on ventilator. So, we have realised that [in] Ghana, the people you see who are sick, or who have the virus, are very small. Most of the people that we go out searching for them, they are not sick. That’s why some times it is very difficult for us to convince somebody to go into isolation.”
He said that the curve has several parameters, for that reason, one needed to check which curve they were talking about.
“Because, in Ghana, our health system, so far, because of the measures put in place, is such that it is not overstretched. In Ghana, our health system is such that our mortality rate [is] 0.66%. If you look at the number of people who die from malaria, you realise that [more] people are even dying from road accidents than Coronavirus.
The post Ghana to see decline of Covid-19 soon -GHS appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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