Practice ‘contact tracing’ technique in food sharing. – Prof. Ellis Owusu-Dabo to govt

The Dean of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology’s (KNUST) School of Public Health, Professor Ellis Owusu-Dabo has advised government to consider adopting the ‘contact tracing’ approach in the food distribution exercise to Ghanaians to minimize the potential risk of the Coronavirus spreading, Mypurefmonline.com reports.

The Epidemiologist and Global Public Health Consultant indicated in an interview with Kwame Adinkrah on ‘Pure Morning Drive’ Thursday, April 16, 2020 that since government has already been successful in tracing persons infected with the Covid-19, it will be more appropriate for it to adopt same methodology in identifying the underprivileged and needy in the society so as to directly supply the food items and hot meals to them to control the assembly of people in particular areas which pose risk to the society in terms of community spread of the virus.

“The food sharing intervention method used by government is good; now the only challenge is that the people gather overwhelmingly in their numbers which is scary. All the same, as we can easily identify persons infected with the virus, trace them and test them, so can we employ same techniques in identifying the needy and supply them with the food. This will minimize the community spread of the virus.”

Prof. Ellis indicated further that government’s approach in minimizing the spread of the virus through the various restriction methods are the best pragmatic way possible, taking into account the hot spots, potential risk of community spread and the virus being more of an ‘urban virus’. “I think government must be commended.”

However, he appealed to Ghanaians to be more circumspect in their bid to satisfy their hunger as the Coronavirus is real.

“Kwame let me appeal to my fellow Ghanaians to please be wary of how we rush to chase the food being shared. We must not allow poverty to push us in carrying the virus home. We seem to be joking with it but the virus is real,” he said.

It would be recalled that on April 5, 2020, Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo brought out some social intervention measures to help Ghanaians during the lockdown period.

Part of the relief measures was to provide food for many needy people in the affected lockdown areas whose means of livelihoods were cut by the lockdown exercise.

The partial lockdown started on Monday, March 30, at various parts of Ghana including Accra, Tema, Kasoa, Obuasi and Kumasi to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

Meanwhile, Ghana has recorded a total of 641 confirmed cases with 83 recoveries across the country.