There will be relief by end of May – Former GHS Director-General

The deadly COVID-19 can finally be defeated in Ghana by the end of May 2020 if we continue with social distancing and the continuous hand washing, a former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Appiah Denkyira has stated.

Speaking on the Morning Starr Tuesday, Dr Denkyira told host Francis Abban that the lockdown and social distancing measures put in place by the government are very important if Ghanaians want to overcome the killer bug.

According to him, the contact tracing and enhanced testing being done by the government will help the health service to be ahead of the disease that has killed over 74, 000 people worldwide.

“We are on course, with the contact tracing we are ahead of the disease, so if the 73 is from the 15, 000 then I am sure we would get more. The lockdown is very important and if we continue with washing our hands …I am sure by the end of next month Ghanaians will see some relief unless people go out of the jurisdiction.”

Ghana’s total case count for COVID-19 has jumped to 287 after the country recorded 73 more cases on Monday. The biggest jump in cases since the country recorded its first case on March 6.

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).

Globally over 1.3 million people have been infected by the disease while close to 300, 000 have recovered.

The US leads the number of infections with over 350, 000 cases followed by Spain, Italy and Germany.