COVID-19: Ghana records 851 new cases between Dec 8-27

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has reported a total of 851 cases of COVID-19 in 20 days between December 8, 2020, and December 27, 2020.

There has also been eight deaths and 1,919 recoveries/discharges within the same period.

The GHS resumed reporting figures on December 8 after a 15-day lull which started on November 22, 2020, when the country had 775 active cases and 323 deaths from the disease.

It will be recalled that the Director-General of Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, had disclosed that his outfit was expecting a spike in cases over the Christmas holidays due to commercial and social activities, as well as travels.

“For the Christmas there is going to be increase in commercial activities that will obviously increase the risk of spread. Especially when we have majority of the cases in Accra, people and commercially people are coming into Accra to buy and going to sell in another town that creates another area we have to be careful about so these are some of the reason why we have to up the game so as at the protocols are concerned,” Dr Kuma-Aboagye said at a press briefing on December 10, 2020.

"There will be increase in travelling within the country around the Christmas time people are going to criss-cross the country. There is also going to be increase in social gathering activities. People are going for parties these are all spots that we have to look at to ensure we don’t have a spread," he added.

According to Dr Kuma-Aboagye, events before and during the elections were not a contributive factor to the increase in cases.

He noted however that, the GHS' concern was the post-election activities.

"For the election, our challenge is that the queuing for voting…queuing is a risk but the large number of our polling stations, because of the fewer numbers, we didn’t see the large queues that would have led to a risk. Of course, celebrations, the jubilation is another risk," he said.

Latest case count

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has announced 90 new cases of COVID-19 bringing the country's active cases to 842 as of December 27, 2020.

The GHS update also indicates that two more persons have died from the disease bringing the country's death toll to 335.

The country has recorded 54,771 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 53,594 recoveries from the illness.

The Greater Accra region remains the hotspot of COVID-19 in the country with 492 active cases, followed by the Eastern region with 27 cases and Volta region with 19 cases.

Meanwhile, 264 cases have been detected from international travellers at the Kotoko International Airport.