Coronavirus: Set up more testing centres to speed up results – Mahama urges govt

Former President John Dramani Mahama has called on government to set up more testing centres to reduce the waiting period for test results of Coronavirus.

According to him, the new cases being discovered shows that the country is entering a new phase which marks the beginning of a horizontal spread of the disease.

John Mahama thus stated that the new numbers require the need for government to redouble efforts in the battle against the pandemic.

“More testing centres need to be set up in order to shorten the waiting time for results. This is important so that the appropriate models of the expected trajectory the disease will travel can be developed in order to guide any decisions on easing the restriction of movements of people.”

The former president made the call during a donation of relief items to 20, 000 households adversely affected by the lockdown directive in Accra Tuesday afternoon.

Currently, Ghana has only two testing centres; the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and the Kumasi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) where all the over 1000 suspected cases have been sent to for testing of the deadly virus.

Also, the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLs) has advised the government to resource other teaching centres to test suspected cases for coronavirus in the country rather than focusing on the two specialized centres.

According to the Association, the two centres which are the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research might not be able to contain other cases of the latest pandemic if it spreads rapidly in the country.

''All attention is on Noguchi and KCCI but what if we have thousand, two thousand cases coming out, do these people have the capacity to handle all these cases? All the teaching hospitals do specialized testing, we are talking about the use of higher technology to do this. We want to question the government why the attention is on only two testing centres. As a professional body, we want to advise that this is too risky and we are technical people, they must take this counsel seriously before we are hit because this may not be the only outbreak others may come''. President of the Association, Dr Ignatius A.N. Awinibuno said in an interview on Unique FM.