President Akufo-Addo has announced that Ghana’s COVID-19 cases has risen to 4,700.
The President made it known in his address to the nation on May 10, 2020.
The death count still stands at 22 but 494 people have recovered.
Those figures, he indicated, were from the 160,501 tests conducted as of yesterday.
He said the backlog of samples for testing was cleared last Friday, meaning that the figures were real time results given on a daily basis since last Friday.
The President said the decision to conduct more tests had helped in finding the positive cases to isolate, treat and curb further person-to-person spread.
“We must understand that the more people we test for the virus, the more persons we will discover as positive, and, thus, have the opportunity to isolate and treat them.
“If you do not test people for the virus, you will not find the persons who are positive, let alone isolate them from the population and treat them and prevent them from spreading the virus.
“Indeed, had we not been proactive in undertaking enhanced contact tracing of infected persons but had relied solely on testing persons who reported to hospital, which is the practice followed by some other countries, that is, routine testing, our total case count would have stood at 1,413. The 3,232, that is, two-thirds of the population of positives, would have been undetected and still be within the population, unknowingly infecting others,” he explained.
President Akufo-Addo intimated that the rapid implementation of all the policies had resulted in our low infection, hospitalisation and death rates, some of the lowest in Africa and the world, saying those policies were to be replicated in some countries.
“We, certainly, must be doing something right in Ghana. Our country has administered more tests per million people than any other country in Africa, and, in fact, the World Health Organisation has reached out to us to share our sample pooling experience with other African countries, so they can adopt this strategy and also ramp up their testing capabilities.
“It is, thus, vital that we continue to maintain the measures of enhanced hygiene and social distancing protocols to contain the spread of the virus, as they are the surest way to a quick return to a life of normalcy,” he emphasised.
