Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare
THE PRESIDENTIAL Advisor on Health, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, has explained that the three million people projected to become infected by the novel coronavirus, out of which a possible death of 15,000 could occur, is based on the World Health Organisation (WHO) model for Ghana.
According to him, even though the projection by the WHO could be possible, there is a greater probability that Ghana will not reach the estimated figures, as the current trend of infection is less than what the world body is anticipating.
Speaking at the Minister’s Press Briefing in Accra yesterday, Dr. Nsiah-Asare disclosed that the WHO model also remained ‘dynamic’, and that the government was in the process of developing its model for COVID-19.
During a TV programme, the former Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) had earlier indicated that some three million people in the country could be infected with COVID-19, and that 80 per cent (2.4 million) of the number may not show any signs or symptoms of the disease, while 5 per cent (150,000) may fall ill.
He disclosed further that 15,000 of persons projected to be critically ill may also die based on the projection by the WHO.
“We expect that about 10 per cent of the population may be infected and out of the 10 per cent of the population, 80 per cent may not show signs or symptoms at all, and 5 per cent of them will be very ill; that is the projection,” he told Joy News on Tuesday.
“If you look at the cases that we are seeing, the cases that are getting critical are very, very small. It means we have a situation where this hypothesis may not be the case in Ghana,” he explained.
Dr. Nsiah-Asare, however, could not tell when infections in the country would peak.
Test Cases
On cases tested, the Presidential Advisor explained that the 68,591 tested cases announced earlier by the President included duplicate testing of cases, adding that some people had more than one test carried out on them.
“When somebody is tested and isolated and being treated, after 14 days you do a second test … the person can be positive,” he explained further, and added that if the individual was positive, the person would still be counted as another test.
“So you don’t count the individual; you count the number of tests. This means that the number of patients will definitely be less than the number of tests,” he said.
By Ernest Kofi Adu