The Ghana Health Service (GHS) is to set up additional COVID-19 sample collection centres across the country to further enhance the testing of cases.
This has become necessary due to the sudden increase in cases being recorded in the country, especially in the Greater Accra Region.
Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye disclosed this at the Minister’s Briefing in Accra yesterday.
According to him, the service had taken a decision to align all testing sites to designated GHS facilities to ensure transmission of test results, that is both positive and negative results to these facilities for proper triaging, management and contact tracing.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye attributed the recent spikes in the number of cases to non-adherence to the protocols, as such; Ghanaians must revert to strict adherence to stem the tide.
He explained that a recent survey conducted by the service indicated that the rate of public adherence to wearing of the face mask had dropped from the 44.3 per cent in August to five per cent in October.
Furthermore, he said the recent spike though unfortunate, did not raise concern for alarm, stressing that “Our positivity rate is still low and we need to do something about it.”
He noted that, as of October 16, the total number of active cases stood at 398 with 310 deaths; however, this had changed over the last few weeks with the number of active cases increasing to 973 with the total number of deaths also hitting 320.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said in line with efforts at eradicating the virus from the country, a number of enhanced measures had been outlined.
The enhanced measures he said included opening of the new infectious disease centre at the Ga East District Hospital, provide MPR starter packs including adequate logistics for health workers and the cases at home.
Touching on the measures instituted at the Kotoka International Airport, he said it had yielded the desired results with more than 178 passengers testing positive out of the 8,240 passengers tested using the Antigen Test Machines.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
