Government says it has spent a whopping US$34.6 million on Covid-19 alone with each test at a cost of US$100.
In a statement to parliament, Deputy Minister for Health, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, said the high investment in Covid-19 testing is yielding results in terms of the low Covid-19-related mortalities.
Dr Okoe Boye dismissed claims by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Ghana was contributing to the rise in Covid-19 cases in Africa.
He insisted that Ghana’s increased testing which leading to increases in confirmed cases is rather important in keeping the Ghanaian populace safe.
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He also described claims that government was indebted to contact tracers as false, explaining that the services of the little over 2,000 contact tracers engaged during the three-week lockdown period to help trace the spread of the virus in the country, have been disengaged and that community health workers on government’s payroll were now undertaking the contact tracing.
Dr Oko Boye also disclosed that the 50 per cent extra allowances on basic salaries for some 6,000 identified frontline healthcare workers for the month of April, had been disbursed and that government’s commitment to healthcare workers remains unadulterated.