Coronavirus: Only 0.18% of enhanced contacts in Greater Accra have tested positive so far - Oppong Nkrumah

The Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has revealed that recent statistics from Noguchi Institute indicate less community spread of the coronavirus.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, April 7, 2020, the Minister in presenting the data on coronavirus infections made a difference between the routine surveillance and the contact tracing figures of persons tested positive of the virus.

"Aside from the routine surveillance, we followed up to trace the contacts of all the positives. Contacts of over 19000 persons have been made with samples from a total of over 15,000 contacts collected so far. In Greater Accra, over 8,000 of such contacts have been made.

“After testing 7461 of these contacts as at yesterday, we found 14 positives, representing 0.18%. While this is still early, it suggests that the community spread is relatively limited. More testing will, however, provide a clearer picture in the coming days. In total, routine surveillance and contact tracing have yielded 287 positives of which 49 have been discharged for home treatment, 228 are responding well to treatment, three have fully recovered and five with underlying health conditions have died," he indicated.

On April 6, 73 new cases of the novel Coronavirus were confirmed bringing Ghana’s total count to 287.

“The regional distribution of the cases are as follows: Greater Accra Region has most cases (256) followed by the Ashanti Region (18), Northern Region (10), Upper West Region (1), Eastern Region (1) and Upper East Region (1).”

The update further revealed that a total of 172 cases were reported from the routine and enhanced surveillance activities and those from travellers under mandatory quarantine in both Accra and Tamale are 115.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Health Service said the period for mandatory quarantine for travellers who arrived from March 21 to 22, 2020 has ended.

“In all, a total of 1,030 travellers were quarantined during the period. Out of these, 79 (7.7%) were positive during the initial testing whilst 951 were negative.

“Twenty-six (26) among those that were initially negative were found to have converted to be positive at the exit screening, bringing to a total of 105 which constitutes 10.2% among the travellers that were quarantined,” according to the latest update.