Speaker directs COVID-19 testing for all MPs
The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Aaron Ocquaye, has directed the Parliamentary Service Board to take steps to ensure all members of Parliament are tested for COVID-19.
The decision, the Speaker said, was part of measures to ensure that all MPs were safe during the period of COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana.
Addressing the parliamentarians on Tuesday, May 19, the Speaker assured the lawmakers that all necessary steps would be taken to protect them against the disease.
“Now that we have an arrangement with Star Ghana, we are participants in public education as indeed MPs must do. Could you imagine members going to educate the public only for us to be seen by the public doing otherwise? It would be most unfortunate.
“I’ve directed the authority of the Parliamentary Service Board, the Clerk and the Parliament medical officers to liaise with the appropriate institutions to immediately conduct tests for all honourable members and staff of the parliamentary service for COVID-19,” he said.
In March 2020, the Speaker directed the Clerk’s Office of the House to check temperatures of the legislators and visitors before they enter the house over fears of a possible outbreak in the law-making chamber.
Coronavirus: Parliament to check temperatures of MPs, visitors before entering the chamber
Ghana recorded 183 new COVID-19 cases on May 19, 2020, bringing its total case count to 5,918. Some 1,754 recoveries have also been recorded and 31 others have died as a result of the disease.
Despite claims by the government that Ghana had reached its peak of the COVID-19 curve and had started recording a decline in the number of cases, the country continues to record high numbers of the infections.
Many analysts and health experts challenged the government’s peak claims describing it as a myth.
The World Health Organization said it would commence investigations into the government’s claims.