Dr John Amuasi, who is a lecturer at the Global Health Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) says the Ghana Health Service is presenting a one-sided picture of Ghana’s Covid-19 peak.
Dr John Amuasi said the announcement made by the Ghana Health Service that the country has reached its peak of the Covid-19 pandemic was only based on surveillance figures.
The Ghana Health Service, GHS at a press briefing on May 5 revealed that the country is now at its peak of Covid-19 infections.
The GHS said the country will likely begin to see a decline in cases soon.
The Director of Public Health at the service Dr Badu Sarkodie said base on the contact tracing and testing being done by the country it seems we are at the peak of the infection.
“The people that are under quarantine and out of the 1,030 within a short time we had 115 of them, those in quarantine in Accra and Tamale so you realise with a sharp rise and now with the cases that we are testing clearly we seem as a country to be on top of the peak.”
According to him, we will only see a decline in cases if people adhere strictly to the Covid-19 safety protocols
“We are at the stage to decline that is the observation now, the declination will depend on how we adhere to the various preventive etiquette that has been enumerated we are not of the woods yet.”
The country’s case count has now reached 4,012 of which 533 have been attributed an industrial outbreak of the Covid-19.
Speaking to the comment made by the GHS, Dr John Amuasi said, “What is happening is that we are detecting more cases but then we are telling people that these cases are on an account of expanded surveillance and not the expanded epidemic spread. When we are not measuring the spread, so this where myself as an academic gets uncomfortable because we are in fact just showing one part of the picture which is true but maybe perhaps turning a blind eye to the fact that we do not know what the other part of the picture looks like, what people think is that time will always reveal the true picture…”
Dr Amuasi said there are different type of peak, death and recovery peaks are also there but the peak presented by the Ghana Health Service is only based on surveillance figures.
The curve presented is base on the result of our largely expanded targeted surveillance, so the question will what peak are we talking about here, we are presenting a pic which is actually reflecting numbers from our expanded surveillance, it not reflecting the rate of spread of the disease.”
According to him, your peak as a country will need to also reflect the spread of the disease not only your surveillance figures.
“You will want your peak to reflect the measure of the rate of spread of the disease when that is sustained then eventually you will have a reproductive number dropping below zero that is when you will eventually have a decline. What has been presented is a certain type of peak”
