Coronavirus: Ghana not ahead of the virus, ramp up! - Jinapor to govt

Member of Parliament for Yapei/Kusawgu constituency and former Deputy Power Minister, John Jinapor, has slammed the Akufo-Addo administration over the country's recent case count of COVID-19, claiming the government is not ahead of the virus as widely proclaimed by the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah.

Ghana's COVID-19 case count has now risen to 2,719 with 294 recoveries and 18 deaths.

The Regional representation of the cases indicates that Greater Accra Region has 2,332 cases, Ashanti Region - 124, Eastern Region - 94, Central Region - 38, Volta Region - 30, Oti Region - 23, Western Region - 21, Upper West Region - 19, Upper East Region - 19, Northern Region - 13, Western North Region - 4 and the North East Region has two cases.

The Information Minister believes the government's enhanced testing technique has been beneficial because it's helped the government to go ahead to detect the virus before a rapid transmission in the country.

Also, according to President's Health Advisor, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, Ghana's case count is one of the lowest in the world with a low mortality rate of 0.66%.

But to John Jinapor, government needs not gloat that it is doing a better job at preventing the disease from spreading in the country.

He would rather the current administration steps up its game in fighting the pandemic.

The Yapei-Kusawgu MP raised issues with the country's testing technique explaining that it takes two weeks for a person to receive results when sample is tested, which to him, is a long period for infections to spread from one person to another.

"You can imagine what will happen within the two weeks. So, we are not ahead of the virus. We're simply not ahead of it . . . The luck in Africa is that the whole of the continent, when you take a critical look at the sub-Saharan Africa in particular and South Africa compared to Western countries; our rate of infection is low. I mean there is no doubt about that. The data proves the rate of infection is very low but still if we are almost getting to 3,000 for a country such as Ghana, then it's very alarming. I will say ramp up our actions. We can't continue our old ways because the cases are increasing and more Regions are being covered. So, it calls for very serious actions," he stated on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' morning show.