Coronavirus: It’s a lie, no compulsory mass-testing – Agyeman-Manu

It is not true that the government of Ghana is undertaking mass compulsory testing of Ghanaians for the COVID-19, Health Minister Kweku Agyeman-Manu has said.

So far Ghana has recorded 195 cases with five deaths and three full recoveries. Updating Ghanaians on the situation on Wednesday, Mr Agyeman-Manu debunked some media reports that the government has decided to undertake mass compulsory testing in the hotspots.

“I’ll stress, there is no policy as yet for compulsory mass-testing that people are parading on social media”, he told journalists, adding: “If anybody among the team managing COVID-19 had gone on air anywhere or even on social media and had said that we’re doing mass testing in some communities, please this should be corrected now”.

The minister said: “It is correct that we have teams that are working now in Accra and Kumasi for what we call contract-testing. Those who have tested positive, they had contact with people and those who travelled into the country before the quarantine are already in the community. We have got a tall list of them with their contacts, telephone numbers, and from the database that we have, almost all of them are in Accra and Kumasi with isolated cases across the country.

“These are the people we are trying to reach and when we get to each of them, we’ll try to take samples from that person and transport for a test.

“But if we miss one of such people and he’s living with the wife and children, maybe in a very good two-bedroom or three-bedroom self-contain house, they are also contacts, so, there is a need to test the very immediate contact that he has come in with.

“If he is living in a compound house, the tracers will ask questions so those in the compound house who have had contact with that person would also be tested.

“That does not mean that if you come and you are living in NT49 and all the people there had been tested and none of them had gone to NT48, we are going to test anybody in NT48. That is the explanation. So, the contacts will continue from contact to contact but if you have not had any contact and we don’t have any evidence to suspect you, there would not be the need to take any sample from you. And that is not mass-testing or compulsory mass-testing”, he explained.