The Director of Health Promotion at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Da Costa Aboagye says it is encouraging to see a decreasing trend of Ghana’s active cases.
According to him, there is hope for Ghana to overcome the virus soon when Ghanaians adhere to the safety protocols.
‘Four months after recording our first case, though the cumulative case count has exceeded 27,000 we have defied alarming predictions of overwhelming infection rates and deaths’, he noted.
Speaking to the media, Dr. Da Costa explained that the country’s COVID-19 recovery rate is 85% and if Ghanaians follow the safety protocols, the infection rate will continue reduce drastically.
He said the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service together with all health care workers in the country are managing the cases very well and thus have contributed significantly to the high recovery rates and low mortality rates compared with other countries.
With the current ease of restrictions, Ghana’s active case count has seen a sustained decrease trend amidst a few spikes.
From around 7000 active cases in June to 5000 plus cases in early July and currently about 3500 cases. Though this pandemic is caused by a novel virus and is full of uncertainties, the current trend is a good sign of reduced infection rate at a time when some activities are allowed, he posited.
According to the Leader of Risk Communication for the National Covid-19 Response Team, the data means Ghanaians must continue to adhere to the safety protocols as more health education and promotion continues.
Dr. Dacosta said we should not be discouraged by the increasing cumulative cases count as this number includes a large proportion of recoveries and does not tell the true picture of our current state. The focus should be on the active cases which stand at 3,515 since this represents the current number of positive cases we are managing in our hospitals and isolation centers, he said.
Furthermore, The Ghana Health Service explains that part of the 447 new cases recorded on 19th July 2020 was from samples that were taken between the periods of 13 June to 13 July 2020 but reported from the laboratory on July 14. Unfortunately, five more people have died of Covid-19 bringing the death toll to 144.