President Akufo-Addo has urged Ghanaians to ignore the antics of some political actors who because of their parochial interest would want to attribute the increase in the country’s COVID-19 cases, to the failure of his government to institute far-reaching measures in curbing the spread of the disease.
Rather the President insists that the measures put in place by his government have contributed largely to the rate of positivity, deaths, and recoveries from the virus.
Presenting his 9th televised address to the nation on measures adopted with regards to fighting COVID-19, President Akufo-Addo disclosed that the country’s tally has moved from 4,263 as of May 9, 2020, to 4,700 on Sunday, May 10, 2020, out of a total of 160,501 tests. From the new figures, 494 persons have recovered while 22 others have died.
Despite this increase, the President believes the country’s infection count would have been as low as 1,413 if government had not adopted the enhanced contact tracing of infected persons.
“We must understand that the more people we test for the virus, the more persons we will discover as positive and thus, have the opportunity to isolate and treat them. If we do not test people for the virus, we will not find the persons who are positive, let alone isolate them from the population and treat them, and prevent them from spreading the virus. Indeed, had we not been proactive in undertaking enhanced contact tracing of infected persons and relied solely on testing persons who reported to the hospitals, which is the practice followed by some other countries, ie, routine testing, our total case count would have stood at 1,413. The other 3,232, ie, two-thirds of the population of positives would have been undetected and still been within the population unknowingly, infecting others.”
“I know some political actors will want you to believe that our current numbers represent a failure on the part of Government….they need to make such comments for their political survival. On the contrary, we must be emboldened by the knowledge that the 4,700 persons infected so far with the virus have been identified, taken out of the population, isolated, and are being treated. The implementation of our strategy of aggressively tracing, testing and treating is our surest way of rooting out the virus. This early identification of persons with the virus, ensure that they do not spread the virus to others, we are provided with the opportunity to treat them and it helps us to understand better the dynamics of the virus.”
President Akufo-Addo added, “the rapid implementation of all of our policies has resulted in our low infection, hospitalization, and death rates, some of the lowest in Africa and indeed the world, we certainly must be doing something right in Ghana.”