GHS anticipates increase in COVID-19 cases during post-election celebrations

The Director General of Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, is anticipating an increase in COVID-19 cases as a result of post-election celebrations.

He has also anticipated a spike of the disease during the Christmas season due to commercial and social activities, as well as travels.

Addressing a press conference organized by the Ministry of Information on Thursday in Accra, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said his outfit had however enhanced surveillance in high risk communities.

“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,” he said.

"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.

COVID-19 Cases

Giving a breakdown in the number of cases recorded in the country, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the cumulative number of cases as at December 8 was 52,844.

He said two more deaths had been recorded, bringing the tally to 327.

The number of active cases were 897, while the total number of recoveries/discharge was 51,620.