The Ghana Embassy in the United States of America (USA) has revealed that 20 Ghanaians have died from the coronavirus in that part of the world.
Kofi Tonto, an official at the Public Affairs Department at the Embassy, told Alfred Ocansey in an interview on the Sunrise morning show on 3FM Monday, May 18 that this figure was generated from members of the Ghanaian community especially in New York and New Jersey, which are the hardest hit cities in the US as far as Covid-19 is concerned.
Mr Tonto said the embassy is yet to obtain official data on the death toll of Ghanaians in the US but information they received from Ghanaians point to the fact that 20 have died so far.
“We do know of Ghanaians who have passed and we continue to gather data. Unfortunately, because of some health regulations you don’t get the data as to know whether this is Ghanaian or otherwise.
“What we rely on is people within the Ghanaian community informing us of folks who have been affected either by contracting the disease or folks who have unfortunately passed away.
“At our last count, we were about 20 people. This isn’t data from hospital, this is data based on what we gather from the various communities.
“The number I am referring to are persons or Ghanaians who have passed away through Covid-19 in New York and New Jersey.
“New York is one of the hardest hit [cities] and New Jersey shares border with New York and Connecticut. So that is where we had most of the cases particularly in New York,” Kofi Tonto said.
The US has so far confirmed 1.53 million cases with 287,000 recoveries and 90,263 deaths.