Two COVID-19 patients on ventilators – Information Minister
Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has disclosed that two COVID_19 patients receiving treatment at an isolation centre in Accra are on ventilators.
In an interview on Joy News, on Sunday, the Minister said the two were critically ill, hence the need to put them on the life support machines, which allowed them to breathe.
“My understanding is that those who are critically ill are those who are requiring oxygens and ventilators.
“You recall in the case of Boris Johnson, for example, he required oxygen and not on a ventilator, but my understanding is that there are two people who are critically ill are using ventilators,” he said.
Health experts have said it requires mostly ventilators and oxygen in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) when COVID-19 patients have suffered debilitating lung damage and are lacking sufficient oxygen.
“Ghana has 67 ventilators. An extra order of 50 has been made out of which 20 has arrived whilst we await the remaining 30. That together with what we have in the private [hospitals] give us about 200 ventilators in Ghana,” Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu said at one of the press briefings at the Information Ministry.
The ventilators get oxygen into the lungs and remove carbon dioxide from the body when people are too sick to breathe on their own.