Government has moved to establish COVID19 testing centres across all 16 regions in the country.
This, when completed, will boost the country’s testing capacity of the coronavirus.
President Akufo-Addo says that the government is recalibrating 100 Regional and District Tuberculosis Gene Expert Laboratories in the country to help ensure that every region has a minimum situation of one testing centre.
He also says that significant investments are being made in some laboratories, and institutions so they can use PCR Technology.
“We are making significant investments in the laboratories at the Veterinary Laboratory, Accra, the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research Laboratory, Accra, the Police Hospital, the 37 Military Hospitals, the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ho, the Veterinary Services Department in Sekondi-Takoradi, the Public Health Laboratory in Tamale, the War Memorial Hospital in Navrongo and the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, so they can also use PCR Technology,” the President said in a televised address on Sunday, updating Ghanaians on the fight against COVID19
Currently, Ghana’s testing centres for COVID19 are concentrated in Accra and Kumasi.
That notwithstanding, Ghana is ranked number one in the continent in administering of tests per million people, having tested over 60,000 samples.
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According to President Akufo-Addo, the country has so far tested 68,591 COVID 19 samples.
From the sixty-eight thousand, five hundred and ninety-one (68,591) samples tested, we have been able to understand better the dynamism of the virus, map out its geographic footprint, and establish current and potential hotspots. We have also been able to isolate and educate asymptomatic carriers, and, thereby, help minimise the spread of the virus,” the president said
Meanwhile, drones are also being employed to expedite the rate at which COVID19 samples are being tested.
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These drones are used to transport samples to laboratories for testing.
“Government has also introduced the use of drones to expedite the transportation of samples to laboratory centres. On Friday, 17th April, for example, fifty-one (51) samples were delivered from the Omenako Drone Distribution Centre to Noguchi,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo also says that the government is also “introducing rapid results testing to augment our surveillance and enhanced contact tracing efforts so that we can quickly isolate and treat confirmed cases.”
Ghana’s COVID19 case count
Out of the 68,591 COVID19 tests conducted in the country, 1,042 have tested positive, representing 1.5%.
Ninety-nine persons have also recovered from the disease with nine recorded deaths.
In Ghana, infected COVID19 patients are declared to have recovered after testing negative to the virus twice after treatment.
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