Coronavirus: Workplace outbreak worrying

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye has expressed worry over a new thread of COVID-19 outbreak in the workplaces.

According to him, workplaces have the tendency to cause an outbreak of the virus as compared to regular households.

Speaking at a press briefing earlier today, Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said a spike in the number of active cases recorded in the latter part of 2020 and earlier this year was as a result of a spread of the virus in various workplaces in the country. He added that strict adherence to the COVID-19 protocols must be enforced at all times to help curb the spread of the disease.

“The workplace is a very good area to harvest cases but what we know is that a significant match of hotspots is taking place in the workplaces. One workplace can give you 700 cases and so anytime we start reporting workplace outbreaks, it becomes problematic.

"We have the number but we cannot put names of organizations that have had outbreaks on air but what we are saying is that it is an important area we must look at. Last October, the November hike was purely a workplace outbreak that was harvesting the cases we were having.

"We are also saying that apply the protocols in the workplace, wear the mask all the time, where possible, avoid crisscrossing. We are in the workplace, we are moving from one office to another, if you can avoid it, it will help reduce the number of positives, when there is an outbreak,” he said.

The Minister-designate of Information, Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah highlighting the gravity of the new COVID-19 variant, widely known as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), urged the media and citizens to scale up, spread messages, and ensure the enforcement of protocols by way of complementing government’s efforts in combating the virus.

“Should the new case variant become widespread, it could overtake the traditional variant and it appears to be associated with a higher disease burden. It means that instead of lowering our guard or thinking that we have figured this thing out, all of us actually now have to step up our guard because what is now around and creeping around, is a bit more dire than the first one.

"Now that what appears to be a more dire version is around, we want to ask you our colleagues in the media to complement this as much as possible with your own programming and influential support as you used to do very intensively. As we step up messages, you also assist us with a compliment of it. I honestly do think that we have to step up the compliance level beyond the farther and not drop it so that we get the results,” he indicated.

Ghana has recently recorded 772 new COVID-19 cases. This pushes the country’s active case count to 5,515 as stated in a press briefing by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) today, Tuesday, February 2, 2021. Eight new COVID-19 deaths have been recorded which takes the death toll to 424.