Colonel (rtd)
Festus Aboagye, a security analyst, has observed that the government’s earlier
partial lockdown of Greater Accra, Kumasi and Kasoa should have been done
“boldly and very decisively nationwide”.
However, he suggested that “if a lockdown is
to happen again, it should be decentralised, localised, boldly and very decisively
nationwide”.
Col (rtd) Aboagye’s sentiments come on the back
of the increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, with the
tally standing at 2,719 as of Monday, according to the Ghana Health Service
website.
“The only strategy that we are left with now
is to decentralise and localise the lockdown, let’s say that Pokuase or
Kwabenya is an epicentre, it will be easier now to isolate Pokuase or such
other localities and put them under lockdown and do the mass testing and all
the necessary steps and that should be easier.
“That probably has to be the way that we need to
go but I don’t think it’s going to be too practicable to lock down the entire
nation,” Colonel (rtd) Aboagye added.
Analysing the impact of the earlier lockdown in
controlling the spread of the virus, the security analyst stressed that “if we had
locked down very boldly and decisively nationwide for let’s say 21 consecutive
days, the impact would have been greater than locking down partially in terms
of geography and then incrementally from 14 days and then another seven days.
“You can realise that there are a lot of people
now who are against lockdown, not because the lockdown is bad but because we
failed to plan, we failed to recognise that if you lock down you impose hardships
and it was obligatory on the part of the state to relieve those hardships,” Col
(rtd) Aboagye intimated. -starrfmonline.com
