Voters Register: Over 20 persons suspected of coronavirus identified at registration center

Some persons who had gone to register for the new voter ID card at the Korle Bu Police Station registration center were suspected to have symptoms of COVID-19.

Rabiatu Braimah, a health official stationed at the center, indicated these persons had high temperatures, were coughing and had a flu.

Their temperatures recorded as high as 39.6 degrees Celsius which was above the normal 37.5 degrees the health personnel were looking out for.

She said the high-temperature figures were “a little troubling”.

“Not just the temperature, these are people who are giving us symptoms of cough, cold [Flu] and some are trying to be smart about it, but once you persist, they tell you they have had a cough for about a week,” she said.

Members of the public with high temperatures at the registration centers are set aside from other persons and re-checked.

“There are people we go back to check and you realize the temperature goes back to normal. Others, it rather keeps escalating,” she said. “We don’t really put up any attitude to make them feel discriminated against. We try to explain and they have been very cooperative.”

Rabiatu Braimah explained that for persons whose temperatures do not drop, they call for “reinforcement” without specifying if they are tested for the virus.

Yesterday, Tuesday 30th June was just the first day; the exercise ends on 6th August, and the fears of many who objected to the compilation of the new register because it had the potential to spread the Coronavirus are beginning to come true.

The voter registration exercise is not an “essential activity” under new emergency powers granted the President by Parliament.

However, the Supreme Court gave “consequential orders” in a judgment in June that the Electoral Commission (EC) should go ahead and compile a new voter register in line with a new Constitutional Instrument (C.I. 126) which the EC laid before Parliament only recently for that purpose.