IMF shuts Ghana office over coronavirus

The International Monetary Fund is shutting down its local bureau in Accra in a move to test its ability to manage the coronavius pandemic.

Staff in the Accra office were asked to work remotely and move operations online on Friday.

Currently, no staff of the Fund in Ghana has been infected with the coronavirus, Joynews reports.

The report further says, its source close to the IMF said working via virtual platforms is part of several simulations in understanding the situation should any of its staff be “infected”.

The source adds that this it is to ensure that their operations in the country do not grind to a halt should the coronavirus get out of hand in the country.

Ghana confirmed its first cases of coronavirus on Thursday, becoming the tenth country in sub-Saharan Africa to register positive cases.

Ghana’s Health Ministry said its two cases were people who had returned recently from Norway and Turkey.

“These are imported cases of COVID-19. Both patients are currently being kept in isolation and are stable,” the ministry said in a statement.

The coronavirus outbreak has been labelled a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is a term that the organisation had refrained from using before now.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was now using the term because of deep concern over "alarming levels of inaction" over the virus.

A pandemic is used to describe an infectious disease with significant and ongoing person-to-person spread in multiple countries around the world at the same time.

Globally, there have been 134,511 cases recorded and at least 4,970 deaths.