Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare, the presidential advisor on health has attributed the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Ghana to the onset of the rainy season.
Ghana’s active cases hovering around 50 for the past two months, have hit 396, according to the Ghana Health Service.
Talking to an Accra-based FM on the development on Tuesday, (7 June), Dr Asare said the cases recorded are mainly mild to moderate ones.
“For the past one month or so, there were no active cases in 15 of the 16 regions except Greater Accra Region, but as you are aware, what is happening now is that in every year around July, from now when the rain starts up to July, we have a flu-like respiratory track infections,” Asare explained.
“We have a testing site, site where we take samples from and Noguchi tests them… so we picked a few increase in influenza infections, and some of them, because influenza and COVID are family, we also tested them for COVID-19 and we had positive cases identified among these COVID-19 cases,” he said.
“But the most important thing is that most of them are mild to moderate cases which are being treated at home,” he said.
Use nose masks
Dr Asare also admonished Ghanaians to intensify the use of nose masks and adhere to safety protocols to curb the spread of the virus.
“We are also entreating people to reintroduce the use of nose masks within areas where there are a lot of people who are going to meet, especially in corporate organisations when they are having meetings in air-conditioned rooms which are enclosed.
“We entreat them to wear their masks and in schools because we are having flu-like illness. We also entreat the teachers to allow the children or to ask the children to wear nose masks while they are in class or on the school compound,” Dr Asare said.
