Coronavirus: Ghana recording 200 cases daily – Akufo-Addo

Ghana is now recording at least 200 cases of Coronavirus on a daily basis, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said.

During his 22nd address to the nation on Sunday, January 17, the President stated that the number of patients requiring hospitalisation and intensive care is rising.

Describing Ghana’s current COVID-19 status as worrying, Akufo-Addo said, “The number of severe cases, which stood at 18 a week ago, has increased sharply to 120.”

President Akufo-Addo added that two weeks ago, there was no critical case, but Ghana now has 33 critical cases in the various treatment facilities.

“Again, according to statistics from the Ghana Health Service, the considerable number of persons who are severely ill are, surprisingly, relatively youthful persons, with no previous underlying health conditions. The number of confirmed deaths has increased, sadly, from 338 persons to 352 within the period," he said.

“Recent genomic sequencing undertaken by our scientists have established that some arriving passengers tested positive for new variants of COVID-19. These passengers have all been isolated. Furthermore, work is ongoing to determine the presence and extent of spread of the new variants in the general population,” he noted.

He said that detailed investigations of the cases indicate that, apart from arriving passengers at our airport who tested positive, infected persons have recent histories of attending parties, weddings, end of year office programmes, family get-togethers, and funerals.

Akufo-Addo said, "At these gatherings, most of them abandoned the use of the masks and were engaged in actions that led to them contracting the virus," adding that "at this current rate, whereby 13 out of the 16 regions have recorded active cases, our healthcare infrastructure will be overwhelmed’.

He said, if this situation continues, it will severely undermine the efforts Government is making to revitalize the economy, and put the country back onto the path of progress and prosperity, following the ravages of the pandemic.