3 million Ghanaians likely test positive for coronavirus – President’s advisor on health

Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, has said a model generated for coronavirus infections in Ghana projects that 10% of the population is likely to test positive.

Making the revelation on Joy News’ current affairs programme PM Express on Tuesday evening, the former director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said out of the 10% projected infections, majority of the cases are likely to be asymptomatic.

“We expect that about 10% of the population may be infected and out of the 10% of the population 80% may not show signs or symptoms at all and 5% of them will be very ill, that is the projection,” he said.

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With these projections, if Ghana’s population is estimated at 30 million, it implies some three million Ghanaians may test positive for the COVID-19 when infections peak.

Also, 5% of the projected three million infections falling seriously sick suggests that at least 150, 000 of the population will fall within this category.

Out the 150,000 people whose infection will be critical, 10% of will be fatal; which means 15,000 deaths would have been recorded before Ghana gets out of the woods.

Dr Nsiah-Asare, however, said this modelling may not apply strictly to Ghana because of the observed dynamics of the existing cases across the country.

“If you look at the cases that we are seeing, the cases that are getting critical are very, very small…it means, we have a situation where this hypothesis may be the case in Ghana,” he clarified.

The Presidential Adviser on Health, however, could not say when infections will peak in Ghana.

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Ghana’s coronavirus caseload as of Sunday, April 19, 2020, stood at 1,042, a significant increase in previous figures that has compelled many to criticise a decision to lift a lockdown directive.

President Nana Akufo-Addo announced the lifting of the three-week lockdown imposed on some four cities. These cities – Accra, Tema, Kasoa and Kumasi – were placed under lockdown at a time when the country had fewer than 30 cases of infection.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has repeatedly said his government’s reaction to the coronavirus situation in the country is backed by science and data.

Meanwhile, the current recorded cases in Ghana makes it the sixth country in Africa to record the highest number of coronavirus cases.

The others are Cameroon with 1,017 cases, Algeria with 2,629 cases, Morocco with 2,855 cases, Egypt with 3,144 cases and South Africa with 3,158 cases.

Source: Myjoyonline.com