Community cases likely to spread – Dr Yankson urges Ghanaians to stay home

Ghana’s COVID-19 community spread is likely to increase if Ghanaians continue to flout lockdown directive, the General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association, has advised.

Taking his turn on JoyNews’ current affairs programme, Newsfile, Dr Justice Yankson, said it was important to contain the chain of transmission.

President Akufo-Addo on March 27 announced a lockdown of four cities: Accra, Kasoa, Tema and Kumasi.

Dr Justice Yankson described the strategy as critical to flattening Ghana’s coronavirus cases.

He observed that the country was not ready to handle an upsurge in cases with its attendant rippling effects.

“We don’t want to reach a case where we cannot flatten the curve and contain the number of infections from spreading,” he indicated.

He advised that the government took a critical look at the state’s policy.

“We need to use science and technology to zoom or zone areas that potentially have the disease and then encourage some voluntary testing within those zones,” he explained.

He gave an instance where some of the earlier, quarantine groups had tested negative, but after 14 days, 20 of them tested positive.

He explained that “some of these people went into the lockdown with the disease,” only for a follow-up test to confirm their status.

According to Dr Yankson, it would be extremely difficult for any scientist to predict because of the discovery of community spread.

Ghana’s coronavirus cases stand at 408, eight deaths and four recoveries, with the virus spreading to eight regions.

Regions that have reported cases are Greater Accra, Ashanti, Central, Eastern, Northern, North East, Upper East and Upper West.