Directive for mandatory self-quarantine the best – Security Analyst hails Akufo-Addo

A security analyst, Samuel Nana Owusu Appiah, has lauded President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for taking the bold decision to close the country’s international airport and directing all travellers coming in to undergo a mandatory fourteen-day self-quarantine.

According to him, that directive from the President was spot on since it enabled the country to identify persons who are careers of the virus and self-isolate them for treatment.

On March 21, 2020, President Akufo-Addo announced the closure of the Kotoka International Airport and all land and sea borders of the country for two weeks over the coronavirus pandemic.

“All our borders that are by land, sea or air will be closed down for two weeks. Anybody who comes in from Sunday evening will be mandatorily quarantined”, he noted.

The closure of the country’s borders came after the COVID-19 cases jumped to 21 from 19 at that time.

Ever since the directive, a cross-section of the public has criticized the President for acting very late in dealing with the spread of the COVID-19.

However, Mr Owusu Appiah, who is the CEO of Global Intelligence and Security Center, interacting with Kasoa-based Pink FM, Tuesday, April 14, 2020, said the presidential directive was better late than never.

“Any disease is a threat to security, especially, when that disease is an outbreak that could be described as a pandemic. When that happens, it becomes a security threat to any nation that will be affected. When that happens, all the security apparatus and other health agencies and the government will have to meet and take a decision on the way forward. So, there was a suggestion for the government to close our borders and when that is done, all those coming in from our neighbouring and other countries will be stopped from entering. That was the first step in the fight against COVID-19 and it was very commendable. I will applaud the government for taking that initiative. The other step was to close all our airports somewhere on March 21, 2020, and directing that all those coming in will undergo mandatory self-quarantine for a period of 14 days and it was awesome”, he noted.

Ghana has as at Thursday, March 26, 2020, confirmed and recorded 132 cases of coronavirus from an initial two recorded on Thursday, March 12, 2020.

As at the time filing this story, reported cases globally had reached 1,923,651 while recording 119,595 deaths, according to www.worldometers.info, a web portal that keeps track of confirmed coronavirus and its associated deaths and recovery.

A total of 443,886 have so far recovered from the virus, according to the web portal.