Ghana Should Look Forward To Spike In Coronavirus Cases-Expert

A global health expert has warned of an upcoming spike in Ghana’s coronavirus caseload after President Akufo-Addo unexpectedly ended a three-week partial lockdown of Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi areas.

Dr. John Amuasi of the KNUST Center for Collaborative Research warns that the lifting of the lockdown at a time that Ghana’s caseload has spiked beyond thousand may be a mistake that the country will dearly pay for in the coming weeks.

“..there surely, based on the decision we have taken, will be more cases of coronavirus and coronavirus is going to spread faster. What I cannot determine is what the impact of that spreading or increase in infection will be,” Dr. Amuasi told Accra based Joy FM.

His concern comes as an adlib to concerns that have already been raised by many, including the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) Covid-19 team which is warning that the ending of the lockdown is premature and may give Ghanaians a false sense of security.

Ghana’s caseload has now gone beyond the 1000 mark with President Akufo-Addo announcing yesterday that the total number of infections were 1042.

Even so, Mr. Akufo-Addo claimed that the lockdown had achieved its purpose and that it was imperative to open the country up again.

“in view of our ability to undertake aggressive contact tracing of infected persons, the enhancement of our capacity to test,… I have taken the decision to lift the three-week-old restriction on movements in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area and Kasoa, and the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area and its contiguous districts, with effect from 1 am on Monday, 20th April. In effect, tomorrow will see the partial lockdown in Accra and Kumasi being lifted.”

But Dr. Amuasi who is a lecturer at the Global Health Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), warned the President may be repeating a mistake that other countries had made leading to a second wave of covid-19 infections.

“Singapore did not institute testing on the population of migrant workers and this has led to a second wave [and] on the other hand, Hong Kong that maintained a continuous lockdown, has been able to very well manage a second wave.

“But you can only do this at a place like that when you have a small population size, the geography is well defined and you can keep your borders tight and track the movement of people,” he said.