Deputy Minister for health, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye has stated that the country could be recording five deaths for every thousand cases of the novel Coronavirus.
Briefing parliament on Ghana’s handling of the pandemic, he said GH¢34m has been spent on testing alone.
He further lauded the country’s efforts in fighting the virus.
“Ghana’s mortality rate, deducing from the statistics, is 0.5 per cent. This means, for every thousand cases of Covid-19, Ghana could record 5 deaths. Although any Covid-19 death is regrettable and unfortunate, it is important to note that Ghana’s Covid-19 death rate remains one of the lowest in the world,” he said.
Comparing Ghana to other African countries he noted that we have one of the lowest mortality rates.
“A look at these countries tells you the situation in other jurisdictions. Israel has 0.9, Morocco has 1.6, Mali has a percentage of 5 per cent of mortalities, South Africa has had 5,033 deaths with a mortality of 1.4 per cent. You’ll realize, immediately Mr Speaker, that Ghana’s mortality of 0.5 is one that is low compared to the others. This low figure didn’t happen by accident; the policy of enhanced contact-tracing that allows our health system to pick cases that are asymptomatic, is mainly responsible for the low mortality rate”, he stated.
He further stated that, “Ghana has done 346, 990 tests so far, with a positivity rate of 7.9 per cent. By the way, one PCR test costs an average of $100, meaning the Akufo-Addo government has spent over $34.6m on testing alone, not to mention the expenditure on expansion of the testing capacity.”
Source: GhanaFeed.com
