It is completely wrong, unethical to focus on only active coronavirus cases - Biostatistician

A Biostatistician and lecturer at the School of Public Health at the University of Ghana, has called the bluff of government’s decision to only focus efforts on active cases instead of the cumulative coronavirus numbers.

According to Dr Justice Moses K. Aheto, this does not only hamper the government’s efforts so far in curbing the spread of the disease but also presents ways of spreading the disease to unsuspecting people.

Government in an attempt to reach more infected persons in the fight against the disease chose to adopt WHO protocols which subsequently led to the review of existing GHS guidelines for discharging persons infected with COVID-19.

In view of that, the number of recoveries in the early stages of the adoption quadrupled which once again sparked controversy. But in a rather swift reaction, government moved to add ‘discharges’ to the recoveries pane on the daily updates website.

Now in a latest development, during the Minister’s press briefing on Sunday, July 19, 2020, concerned stakeholders have been asked to focus all attention on reducing the active cases to zero instead of the number of the discharges and others.

But sharing a sharply opposing view in an exclusive interview with GhanaWeb, Dr Aheto concluded that it is absolutely wrong and unprofessional on the side of government to strictly concentrate on reducing only active cases to zero.

He said, “you don’t consciously limit the speed at which you’re doing the contact tracing and surveillance then turn around to come and tell us that we should focus on only the active cases because it looks like now, we’re going down. That is very wrong, it is completely wrong…”

In an attempt to provide further clarity and defend his stance on the issue, Dr Aheto further argued that; “Now when you go to the Ghana Health Service page you have recoveries stroke discharges…right now you and I cannot even tell which people actually recovered from the disease and those who were just discharged. So, this is a situation that professionally it’s unethical and I keep calling on government and Ghana Health Service to stop it…”

“They still want to stick to the revised protocol which WHO has even thrown away…In Ghana over 90% of the cases we get are from people who are asymptomatic…now just for you to get back and throw all these people back to the community without establishing that they’re fully recovered is a major issue for us,” he added.