Ghana's strong measures, aggressive testing good - WHO

Ghana’s claim of having reached the peak of its COVID-19 spread would be investigated by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“We are at the peak of the curve”, Ghana’s Director of Public Health Dr Badu Sarkodie, told the media on 5 May 2020.

In an interview with Pulse.com, however, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, said: “We would need to look with the Ghanaian authorities and their data and see the conditions, the trends, the basis on which they say they have peaked”, adding: “What I do know is Ghana is one of the countries that have very significantly expanded testing”.

“So, they have gone out there looking for cases. Some of the increase in numbers that we are seeing in Ghana may be related to the fact that the case definition has changed slightly”, she pointed out, indicating: “In the beginning, they were probably testing people who presented ill at a health facility”.

Dr Moeti added: “We will look with the Ghanaian government. We know that they put in place strong measures for prevention and they are also testing very aggressively which we think is a good combination.”

“The question of whether a country has reached its peak or not is one of the most widely discussed questions worldwide. It’s a matter of looking at the data of a country. We know that countries put in place these preventive measures starting with surveillance, contact tracing, isolation and then the physical distancing”.

“What we are predicting now is that we might reach a peak at a slower pace but a lower level of cases in countries.”