Members of a burial team wearing protective suits bury an Ebola victim at King Tom Cemetery, which is bitterly resented by residents of the adjoining slum, called Kolleh Town by its residents, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Sept. 21, 2014. On Sunday, the government was wrapping up an ambitious national lockdown in an attempt to fight the epidemic, having ordered Sierra Leones citizens to stay home for three days to receive warnings about Ebola, and soap from volunteers. (Samuel Aranda/The New York Times)
Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Badu Sarkodie has revealed that one person who showed symptoms of the deadly coronavirus died in Kumasi over the weekend, though he tested negative for the Covid-19 test.
The deceased according to Dr Badu Sarkodie, the deceased arrived in Ghana from Germany and reported of a condition that mimicked the Covid-19; but an emergency test on him proved that he was free of the virus but died later at the hospital.
The revelation is curious because, at least 129 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in Germany, with the number of cases doubling yesterday.
More than half of the cases are in North Rhine-Westphalia, which counts Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Dortmund as its biggest cities; there are large Ghanaian communities in all these cities.
Dr Badu Sarkodie, however, could not readily tell what killed the person but said the Ghana Health Service is still investigating the matter with the aid of the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research; this is the first death in the 26 suspected cases of the deadly disease that have proven negative in Ghana since the outbreak.
This comes on the back of the pressure group, OccupyGhana’s seven-point recommendation that could help Ghana position itself to counter the outbreak of the virus.
In planning for a possible COVID-19 outbreak, OccupyGhana has suggested that Ghana considers the following variables:1 – Surveillance;2 – Containment;3 – Prevention;4 – Testing;5 – Treatment;6 – Coordination; and 7 – Finance.
But Dr Badu Sarkodie says the country’s points of entry are under constant surveillance to curb the infiltration of the disease.
