Here is why Ghana is recording more coronavirus cases according to Kojo Oppong Nkrumah

Ghana recorded its first two cases of COVID-19 on March 12, 2020.

This was a day after President Akufo-Addo directed the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta to make available the cedi equivalent of $100 million to enhance Ghana’s Coronavirus preparedness and response plan.

Ghana has currently recorded 378 cases with 6 deaths as of April 9, 2020. This is almost a month after the first two cases were recorded.

Most Ghanaians are worried about how the number of infected people keeps rising.

However, at an earlier press conference, Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said people should not be alarmed by the numbers. He explained his reasons for calling for calm.

“The decision was to mandatorily quarantine the about 1030 persons who were coming in within that 48-hour period before the closure of our borders. The first showed that about 79 of them were positive.”

“But the experts advised that it will still be important to ensure that the remaining are kept in mandatory quarantine for a fourteen-day period and tested the second time. Because it is possible that somebody may have been exposed early and wasn’t manifesting the exposure in the samples that were taken. When the second tests were done 26 of them now turned positive,” he explained further.

“So a good count of our case count increase as you have noticed from the data is coming from the second group of persons who tested positive during the second test.”

Mr Oppong Nkrumah explained further that they have started the enhanced contact tracing where teams are tracking anybody an infected person may have come into contact with for testing.

In his fifth address to the nation, President Akufo-Addo said that the results of the over 15,000 people out of the 19,000 who have been traced will determine his next line of action.

“The other part of it is the enhanced tracing exercise that has started. As the president mentioned on Sunday night, as at that time about 19,000 persons had been traced, samples had been taken from about 15,000 and he mentioned that his decision by the end of this week will be heavily informed by the results of that 15,000. Out of the over 15, 000 that have had their samples taken, 7461 have been tested and out of that 14 have tested positive,” Mr Nkrumah said on Tuesday (April 7, 2020).

As of Wednesday, April 8, 2020, the numbers increased to 313. The Ghana Health Service said, “with regards to enhanced contact tracing and testing, as of 7th April 2020, a total of 11,016 samples from contacts have been processed and 37 (0.34%) have been confirmed positive for COVID-19.”

Mr Oppong Nkrumah said “We continue to encourage people that do not get alarmed when you see the raw case count numbers go up. It is because we are aggressively going out there in search of the virus, we will find these numbers. The more numbers we find, the better we are for the Ghana Health Service to provide them with care for the sick.”