Ghana has no record of reinfection of coronavirus

Dr Badu Sarkodie, the Director of Public Health, Ghana Health Service (GHS), on Tuesday said the country has not recorded any cases of reinfections of the COVID-19.

He said although there had been some concerns raised about some Chinese health workers who had tested positive for the disease, pronounced as recovered by health experts, but later tested positive again, Ghana had no evidence of any such case.

He said it was a fact that several Ghanaian health workers had been infected and were being taken good care of, but there was no evidence of reinfection among those who had recovered.

Dr Sarkodie, at the Minister's press briefing in Accra, indicated that a lot of work was being done to protect health workers, who were risking their lives to fight the pandemic.

He said the country's current recovery rate was slowly increasing, and the rate of infections slowing down as evidenced in the decreases in hospitalisation over the past week.

Dr Sarkodie attributed the successes to the strict measures Ghana had implemented right from the beginning of the outbreak.

He said the measures led to the massive containment of the virus, stopping its devastating impact as witnessed in other countries, saying those efforts had since been sustained to halt community spread.

He noted that the fact that the virus was no respecter of persons and thrived on infected surfaces for several hours, there was the need for sustained regular cleansing of those surfaces.

Dr Sarkodie said that called for the need to strictly adhere to the preventive measures, which included the regular cleansing of items such as telephones, door handles, pens, table surfaces and washrooms.

He stated that apart from the regular office space, factories and other informal workplaces, the health facility setting was one key risk area for picking up infections and people must be extra careful in their visit to such places.

Dr Sarkodie, however, said there was currently no evidence or demonstration of healthcare workers being responsible for spreading COVID-19 in their communities.

“These health professionals have been professionally trained to be able to handle or contain the virus and other infections and keep them at bay, so they do not spread to other people.”

He said Ghana had also put in place other stringent mechanisms to ensure that places such as the prisons could prevent infections and had quarantine centres to hold infected persons should there be any positive cases, since the impact could be massive.

Meanwhile, Ghana has recorded 7,117 positive cases of COVID-19 as at May 26, 2020, with 2,317 recoveries and 34 deaths.