Ghana Covid-19 Jumps To 16 After Akufo Addo, Bawumia Prayers

Just a day after President Akufo Addo and his Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia held a Christian and Muslim prayer sessions respectively, Ghana’s coronavirus case shot up from seven to 16.

As at Wednesday March 18, 2020, officially confirmed cases of Covid-19 were at seven. On Thursday Morning, President Akufo Addo met with clerics to hold a Prayer session to ward off the coronavirus. Today, Friday, March 20, 2020, Vice President Bawumia followed suit with Islamic clerics.

Ghana’s confirmed cases now stand at 16 from 11 on Thursday, according to the Ghana Health Services on its website dedicated to Covid-19 updates. The five new cases were all recorded in the Greater Accra Region.

The latest recorded cases have taken a new turn for the worst for Ghana as it shows that they were spread within Ghana, unlike the first 11 cases which were imported from Europe and the United states.

Out of the five cases, three had no record of having travelled into Ghana from abroad, these include a 29-year-old lady, a 34-year-old woman and a 54-year-old man all residents in Accra and Tema. The 34-year-old was found to have had contact a work colleague who had been officially confirmed to have contracted the deadly disease. The other two had no record of direct contact with a confirmed Covid-19 patient.

This reality has sparked fears that a lot of unsuspecting victims are walking with the highly contagious disease unaware and may have set off a string of secondary infections.

Already, there over 500 people estimated to have had contact with the first seven confirmed cases. It is unclear how much more the new cases may have contacted.

Whatsup News gathered that government officials may be privy to a lot more cases than has been reported as they seek to manage the flow of information on confirmed cases.

However, the Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has hinted that there may be more cases set to be announced soon.

According to Mr. Oppong Nkrumah, predictions by health experts are that the number of cases of the pandemic will rise within the next couple of days before any decline can be experienced.

 “The health experts tell us that the next two weeks are critical in determining whether or not we will get significant community spread. They tell us that, the general theory of pandemic management is that, often the numbers are likely to go up a bit before the situation gets better. Therefore, they are bracing for the possibility of some limited recordings of more cases in the medium term but they continue to assure us that, the systems they are putting together are such that we are able to control it and hold this virus in check,” he said.

Ghana is in a partial lockdown as the President has banned all public gathering of more than 25 people. Schools have been closed and the streets are gradually becoming ghost towns similar to Europe which has been hard-hit by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, official records show that out of the 16 reported cases in Ghana, about eight of them are recovering.

Latest global figures show that over 266,000 have been infected with 11,100 death and 90,000 recoveries.

The Ghana Mental Health Authority has advised Ghanaians not to panic about the disease, saying fear can lower immunity which is the main target of the Covid-19.

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