Coronavirus: President Akufo-Addo didn't act early enough - Asiedu Nketia

General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia says he has reasons to believe that the objective of Ghanaians in the fight against the novel coronavirus is quite different from that of President Akufo-Addo's government.

He explained that the Akufo-Addo administration missed the point at the initial stage when the country had two confirmed cases as the President at that time should have closed the borders of the country.

He stressed that the mandatory quarantine and contact tracing would have been more effective had the government begun it at the early stage.

“The preparation of the government after closing the borders and the airport should have been to conduct contact tracing which they are now doing when the country had two confirmed cases at the beginning of the spread. At that time, contact tracing would have been more effective than the current situation,” he argued.

Speaking on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, General Mosquito as he is popularly known insisted that the Akufo-Addo administration's failure to put measures in place on time worsened the situation as we now have community spread.

He again asserted that the Akufo-Addo government without clear objective in the fight against the COVID-19 failed to carry out mass testing to cover those who have the virus and those who don’t have it in the epicentres, making it difficult to contain the virus.

With our decentralisation syetem, the NDC Chief Scribe was optimistic that the country could have contained the virus within the first two weeks of the partial lockdown as government could have bought a lot of test kits and protective gears for the health workers to do mass testing.



“...he should come out to tell Ghanaians the number of PPEs he has been able to buy for the professional health workers, but whenever the President talks about coronavirus, his focus is rather on the foodstuffs they are distributing to Ghanaians,” he mentioned.

He reiterated that the health workers will choose their lives over incentives that the President is promising them, hence the need for the government to provide them with the PPEs as a matter of priority.

He believes the objective of the government is different from that of Ghanaians.