Eyes on the Ground: Banks in Accra choked on lockdown day 17

Wednesday, 15th April 2020 is 17 days since Ghana instituted a partial lockdown of Accra, Tema, Kasoa and Kumasi to stem the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic in the country.

With the exception of the exempted few who are considered essential workers, many have been confined to their homes and neighbourhoods for over two weeks and people seem to be already running out of money.

A drive through Accra by GhanaWeb showed many banks such as Ecobank, ABSA, UBA and Access, were receiving more customers than they have had since the lockdown began.

Customers had trooped in to withdraw money for the coming days with all the uncertainty as far as a lockdown extension beyond Sunday, April 19 is concerned.

To ensure that the social distancing directive was being enforced, most of the banks had set up tents in front of their buildings with chairs for customers to sit whilst they wait for their turn to go into the banking hall and transact their business.

Ghana has so far recorded 636 Coronavirus cases with 70% of patients having no history of travel.

According to the Information Minister, the only reason Ghana’s numbers keeps rising is that government has been proactive in its fight against the virus.

At a press briefing, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah stated that “we continue to encourage people that do not get alarmed when you see the raw case count numbers go up. It is because we are aggressively going out there in search of the virus, we will find these numbers. The more numbers we find, the better we are for the Ghana Health Service to provide them with care for the sick.”

Of the 636 cases Ghana has recorded so far, 17 have reportedly made a full recovery whilst 10 have lost their lives. With the exception of two persons, the patients are all said to be responding to treatment.