The GreaterAccra Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Monica Ankrah, has reined in the numbers on the number of infections happening among students on SHSs campuses, claiming infections are not high.
After the Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, had given an update that a little over one hundred students have been infected on the various campuses, Monica Ankrah, is claiming that the infected are only 62 in Greater Accra.
And she gives her own estimation by excluding over 50 students that have been infected at the Accra Girls Senior High School, barely a month after final year students were made to return to campus.
“To the best of my knowledge, in the whole of Greater Accra, apart from adding that of Accra Girls, we have about 62 cases,” she told journalists in Accra during a disinfection exercise at Accra Girls SHS today.
Monica Ankrah also dismissed the demands by Teacher Unions across the country for the schools to be closed down immediately, saying the number of infections is still low on campuses.
There have been over one hundred infections and two deaths after students were made to return to campus against all sound medical advice barely a month ago.
Madam Ankrah said of the Teacher Unions concern; “naturally they will be scared, hearing that we are recording cases in our schools, they are human beings and therefore we need to urge them on because what we are told is that when there is an epidemic, you need to keep it at the epicentre, you don’t spread it so they have been asked to keep the children in schools where there are health personnel to take care of them.”
“The numbers are not so overwhelming, in some of the schools, one or two cases, and when they are tested positive, they are sent to the treatment centre before they are brought back to school. And so it is better we manage them at that level rather than sending them home.”
Already, Ghana’s high infection has led to the placement of her citizens on a list of countries which are not to be given admission into the EU region.
Washington based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, has forecasted that spiralling infections in Ghana could lead to over 6,000 deaths by November.