Within two days, Ghana has recorded six official cases of the deadly Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic with 149 possible cases more on the loose, making Ghana the fastest transmission hub in West Africa.
While Ghana’s figure has jumped exponentially, other West African countries such as Senegal (10 cases), Nigeria (2), Ivory Coast (1 case), Burkina Faso (2), Togo (1 case), etc, The official records in these countries appear to have been contained as no significantly new patients have been recorded in more than a week of the initial confirmations.
Ghana’s Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service (GHS) Dr Badu Sarkodie, today confirmed the gloomy details in a press conference at the Ministry of information.
According to the GHS director, the four new cases were confirmed as positives between Friday March 13, 2020, and March 14, 2020, by the Noguchi Memorial Medical Research Institute, involving a 56-year-old Ghanaian who returned from a trip to the United Kingdom on March 4, 2020; a Ghanaian female student of the University of Ghana; a man in Obuasi and another in Tema.
All these carriers of the Covid-19 had “imported” the disease into Ghana from Germany, the USA, UK Switzerland, Turkey and Norway. “All the six cases were imported into the country…restrict travels to essential travels only as directed by the President,” Dr. Sarkodie stated in his doomsday confirmation.
On Average, all these patients went about their daily routine of interacting with other people for about 10 days before their symptoms forced them to seek medical attention and eventual confirmation that they indeed had the Covid-19.
In total, the Ministry claims the patients have been in contact with at least 150 other people whom authorities are frantically trying to hunt down. Of the current cases, that of the Norwegian Ambassador to Ghana Grunnar Andreas Holm, appear to be the most serious as he had the most contact OF 107 people since his return to Ghana on March 4, 2020.
Mr. Holm reportedly organised a party in his resident on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, where he interacted with diplomats and crème de la crème of the society.
This has sparked panic and eventual closedown of the high-brow international schools in Accra, such as the Lincoln Community School, German-Swiss School and the Ghana International School (GIS). Parents and students of the school are said to have been in contact with the Covid-19 carrier.
Critics blame the initial lackadaisical altitude of the Akufo Addo administration towards the disease, including the president risking infection himself by travelling to Norway with an entourage of about a hundred ministers and advisors to Norway, the second-highest transmission hub in Europe per capita.
Also, in the face of the rampaging pandemic, the government had refused to restrict flights from high-risk areas such as China and Italy until now.
As it turned out, the government’s faith in the temperature scanners installed at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) had disintegrated as it turned out that those measures failed to detect the entry of all the cases that “imported” Covid-19 into the country.
Globally, China and Europe have become the most dangerous hubs of the disease.
There are so far approximately 150,000 infected people globally and about 5,000 have been reportedly killed by Covid-19. Most of the deceased are mainly older people and people with chronic diseases.