COVID19; Ghana's Situation - Lockdown lift, Premature Decision? A Penny for your Thoughts
Been one of the first countries to adopt and practice the enhanced contact tracing system in the fight against COVID19 and in trying to contain the spread of the virus in the country, Ghana recently lifted its partial lock down which focused on the hotspot regions which were the two main capital cities, Greater Accra and Kumasi. Whiles lots of people are calling this a premature decision the president informed the general public that the decision was purely backed by science and the statistics indicated that we had contained the spread as the false positives were more with a low prevalence.
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A week and few days more after the lockdown was lifted our total number of confirm cases has risen from 1042, 99 recoveries and 9 deaths to 1671 with 188 recoveries and 16 deaths. The male gender continues to dominate with 61% with the female trailing behind at 39%. Those with travel history now stands at 13% as community spread continues to rise. 12 out of the 16 regions have reported cases with the numbers 1,433 (Greater Accra), 84 (Ashanti Region), 57 (Eastern Region), 18 (Upper East Region), 17 (Oti Region), 17 (Central Region), 13 (Northern Region), Volta Region (11), 9 (Western Region) and 8 (Upper West).
Whiles things may not seem to have escalated that much, Ghana is the first African country to take this bold step and rumors are that public gatherings may be allowed sooner than expected. What do you think about Ghana's Situation? Do share you thoughts in the comments below.
false positives are better than false negatives. as long as the symptoms are mild you just tell them to stay put at home. czech republic and spain ended up buying corona tests from china with 80% not working and not identifying the positives. many countries ended up returning the faulty equipment recieved form china.
I saw from other posts from nigeria that their smartphone ownership is at 65% (perhaps its similar in ghana), so with google and apples new update that hopefully comes up, you ping with bluetooth phones near by and say hello, and if any of those phones get sick, then each phone contains the data of any smartphone that has been near by. it is about to be implemented in europe and usa. this is a software solution for getting contact tracing, hence cheap to implement once developed. not sure if it will be deployed also in ghana.
considering that ghana is still to peak the daily new cases, and has not reached the end of this wave, i would say its a bit early to lift lockdown. also when opening lockdown many countries first try opening only book shops and small shops. u dont jump into water u first test the water with ur pinky toe.
i see food has become an issue in many african countries. many would rather buy food from the little money than a mask or soap, since their daily salary is cut. this is certainly a problem. if people are not aware of the risk or unable to collectively respond to the disaster than ghana looses.
this is though just my opinion. im no expert in such matter.
I attached below the screenshot of daily recorded cases in ghana and you tell me if statistics say ghana "contained the spread".
also the logarythmic chart in cases seems to follow a linear trend now, meaning exponential growth in this pandemic, so ghana is no where near the peak.
Thanks for the well delineation, indeed from the charts one would indeed say the cases have not yet been contained. The case of poverty too is an issue as many had run dry in terms of finances after staying at home mandatorily for one month, perhaps the crirs and wails were too much for the government to bear? Either way the COViD19 trust fund that was set up to support the crisis has seen massive turnout from philanthropist and may organizations maybe more would be done later on and this lift may be a test phase to the next move, either way we can only hope things don’t get out of hands.
Ghana recently also came up with an app however it is unlike what you described, this is to provide detailed information about cases and to report or solicit for help when one develops symptoms or want to be sure that their not feeling well is not as a result of having been infected. Perhaps this would be incorporated later on. The ministry of information has said that Rapid Diagnostic Tests are been developed that would allow a drive through test to be done which would scale up the testing process, I question however remains how best this is gonna help the whole situation.
that is a great news for Ghana. I wish my country Nigeria could have done that bat the initial stage but they did it when it was too late and the virus was already in the country. the fate of Nigeria currently is unknown.
Let’s not loss hope just yet, information from WHO indicates many of the developing countries are on the move to securing a vaccine or a cure, hopefully it may not be too late for the global village by the time one is secured. Is Nigeria on total lockdown?
yes. nigeria is on total lockdown
The world will surely defeat this ongoing pandemic.
Yes surely, is only a matter of time, the race for survival till then is now the concern
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