President Akufo-Addo has given the reason behind Ghana’s sudden jump in Covid-19 recovery figures.
Per the Ghana Health Service’s data, as of Saturday June 20, 10,473 persons had recovered from the disease with an active cases figure of 3,596, stoking a public debate.
Ghana has revised its policy for the discharge of Covid-19 patients as part of measures to reduce ‘rising cost in testing’ and ‘increasing workload’.
President Akufo-Addo in his 12th address to update the nation about the Covid-19 situation on Sunday said the spike in recovery figures were due to the World Health Organisation’s revised protocols.
There is now new evidence which states that after ten (10) to fourteen (14) days, a person, with no symptoms, is unlikely to transmit the virus to others, even if the person continues to test positive, the President explained.
President Akufo-Addo
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The President explained also that after three weeks of analysing and studying the update and recommendation and situating it in the Ghanaian context, Ghana had adopted the WHO policy.
Meanwhile, countries in the European Union, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and in Dubai are also following similar pathway.
At the outset of the pandemic, the scientific community and the WHO on January 12, 2020, recommended two main criteria for declaring someone who has tested positive as having recovered from the disease.
The scientific thinking was that as long as you continue to test positive, you are capable of infecting others, hence the requirement for the two consecutive, negative tests before you are declared as having recovered.
However, in its revised policy. WHO explained the first is that you no longer have symptoms, and the second is that you are no longer capable of infecting others.