Investigate 533 confirmed coronavirus cases at Tema Fish Processing plant - Cameron Duodu

Veteran journalist, Cameron Duodu, has urged the government to set up an enquiry to establish facts on how one person was able to infect 533 others with the COVID-19 virus at a fish processing plant at Tema.

He said a public examination of the behaviour of all the personnel involved in the process of detecting and containing the infection would help educate the business community on the importance of strictly abiding by all safety protocols.

In a statement issued in Accra on Tuesday, the Ghanaian Times columnist expressed shock at the implications of the mishap which according to him, could rapidly increase the country’s COVID-19 case count.

“If one person was able to infect 533 others, just extrapolate that to embrace each of the 533 persons also infecting ten persons each. That would give us 5,330 persons, and if that were to occur, we would be in the territory of an exponential rate of infections.

“So we need to establish exactly how the one person was able to infect 533, how the infection was detected and how long it took for tests to be carried out at the factory, and why. This is not a matter whose deadly implications we can mask with our usual complacent and lackadaisical attitude,” it said.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in his address to the nation on Sunday disclosed the fish processing outbreak but did not provide details of how the disease spread in the facility or if safety measures had been in place.

He said that the 533 positive cases, which represents about 11.3 per cent ofthe country’s total infections of 4,700, then, were part of a backlog of about 921 cases.

The fish processing company, Pioneer Food Cannery, later confirmed the incident in a statement which also announced that it was closed down temporarily as soon as the first case was confirmed, for disinfection staff were made to the self-quarantine with contact tracing starting immediately.

As of Tuesday, Ghana had 5, 127 cases with 494 recoveries and 22 deaths.