Statistician challenges Ghana Health Service data

Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Badu Sarkodie yesterday revealed that data on Ghana’s rate of Covid-19 infections shows the country’s case count has peaked.

He made this statement at the regular press briefings organized by the Ministry of Information to give updates on the country’s fight against COVID-19.

But statistician, Dr. Justice Aheto, has challenged the stance of the GHS on Happy98.9FM’s Happy Morning Show.

In an interview with host, Samuel Eshun, the Senior Lecturer at the Department of Biostatistics School of Public Health, University of Ghana said, “we don’t have data for daily analysis to inform policy decisions. But the data saying we are at the peak of COVID-19 is not true”.

According to him, this is the time for the country to increase and focus on individual mapping in the fight against COVID-19, rather than focus on identifying hotspots of the virus because the virus can still spread further.

On his authority, infectious diseases like COVID-19 are not static. “As a country, we should have dealt with other regions after identifying hotspots of the virus. It was the ideal way of dealing with the situation and guaranteed reduced infection rates. But we didn’t and that is how the virus spread to the Eastern and Oti regions when they had no cases prior to the lockdown.

Not wanting the nation to make the same mistake, the academician has advised the GHS and Government to focus on identifying and putting in place measures to control the virus and not deceive itself by saying, “Ghana has reached its peak of Covid-19 infection curve”.