Lockdown Tamale, Wa to avoid rapid spread – NGOs in Health to Akufo-Addo

The Executive Director of NGOs in Health, Dr Gabriel Benarku has appealed to government to consider a lockdown of the Northern Region in order to avoid the exponential spread of coronavirus in Ghana.

According to him, the cultural and social practices of Northerners make it impossible for them to keep an effective social distancing routine.

Speaking to Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Tuesday, Dr. Benarku urged government to begin to prepare the entire nation for a gradual lockdown.

“Very soon the country should prepare for a progressive lockdown else the situation will get out of hands. Northerners cling to themselves especially during greetings, and their general cultural practices and social practices. Which means that there will be more social contacts. Let’s begin to lockout the Northern region, Wa and the others because of the social and cultural practices,” he said.

Ghana’s total case count for COVID-19 has jumped to 287 after the country recorded 73 more cases, the Ghana Health Service has announced.

The GHS stated that the cases were detected following measures for enhanced contact tracing and testing.

So far a total of 287 cases of COVID-19 with five (5) deaths have been recorded. The regional distribution of the cases are as follows: Greater Accra Region has most cases (258) followed by the Ashanti Region (18), Northern Region (10), Upper West Region (1), Eastern Region (1) and Upper East Region (1).

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.

The period for mandatory quarantine for travellers who arrived 21-22 March 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.