Coronavirus: GHS to enhance surveillance in high risk communities

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) says it is putting in place measures to enhance surveillance in high-risk areas and testing for COVID-19 cases to prevent potential escalation.

The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, at a media briefing in Accra on Thursday, to update the public on COVID-19 infection situation, said the Service was anticipating an increase in COVID-19 cases as a result of post-election celebrations.

He said the GHS was also anticipating a rise in the infectious disease during the Christmas season due to commercial and social activities, as well as travels.

In view of that, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said, it would enhance surveillance in high-risk communities to curb potential escalation.

“For the Christmas, there is going to be increase in commercial activities that will obviously increase the risk of spread, especially when we have majority of the cases in Accra.

"People are coming into Accra to buy and going to sell in another town and that create another area we have to be careful and that's why we have to up our game as far as the protocols are concerned,” Dr Kuma-Aboagye said.

"There will be increase in travelling within the country around the Christmas time people are going to criss-cross the country. There is also going to be an increase in social gathering activities. People are going for parties and these are all spots that we have to look at to ensure we don’t have a spread," the GHS Boss noted.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye stated that events before and during the elections were not a contributive factor to the increase in cases because there were no large crowds as the Electoral Commission provided face masks to prospective voters in rural areas.

However, he said, the GHS' concern was the post-election activities, saying, "For the election, our challenge is the queuing for voting…queuing is a risk but the large number of our polling stations but with the fewer numbers, we didn’t see the large queues that would have led to a risk.

Of course, celebrations, the jubilation is another risk," he said.

Giving a breakdown of the COVID-19 cases, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the cumulative cases as of December 8, was 52,844, with 51,620 discharged/recoveries, representing 97.7 percent recovery rate.

Three hundred and thirty-seven (327) persons have died from COVID-19 related diseases such as hypertension, cardiac failure and diabetes.

At the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), he said, a total of 86,768 passengers have been tested of which 391 were positive.

Of the figure, 113 are currently active and the rest have been treated and discharged.