Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo on Sunday lifted targeted lockdown on two major regions in the country citing improved testing of the coronavirus pandemic across the West African country, reported Africa News.
In televised address to the nation, the president also announced that Ghana’s tally had passed the 1,000 mark. He said that the latest figure is the result of an aggressive contact tracing as well as enhanced testing capacity by the Ghana Health Service.
“The main reason our country has seen an increase in the number of confirmed cases over the last three weeks is because of the decision we took aggressively to trace and test contacts of infected persons,” the president said. “This has enabled us to identify and isolate infected persons, protect the population from further infections, and contain better the spread of the virus.”
Around 68,591 have been tested for the virus so far out of which 67,549 tested negative representing 98.5% while a 1,042 have tested (1.5%) tested positive for the coronavirus.
The president said that the 99 persons who have recovered from the deadly virus constitutes 9.5%, while total number of deaths stood at nine (0.9%).
Notably, Ghana is the first African country to not extend but lift a lockdown. Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and more recently Zimbabwe have all extended lockdowns aimed at curbing the spread of the pandemic.
But the Ghana government has warned that lockdowns could be imposed in hotspots again in future if need be.
In related news, the government has begun using delivery drones from U.S.-based startup Zipline to test people more quickly outside major cities for the novel coronavirus.
Zipline operated its first coronavirus test flight on April 1 and will now fly samples collected from more than 1,000 health facilities in rural areas to laboratories in the capital Accra and to Kumasi, the second-largest city.
