It’s premature to lift coronavirus restrictions - Alex Segbefia

Mr Alex Segbefia, a member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) COVID-19 Technical Team has asked government to "watch and monitor" COVID-19 cases for sufficient data before lifting restrictions to contain the pandemic.

“It’s premature to lift the restrictions on social gathering. We should watch it. The reoccurrence rate is pretty high and even countries that recorded cases way earlier are still struggling with having to deal with the virus. If one person can infect about 600 people at a sector, it means the virus is highly infectious and therefore if not watched and monitored, we’ll have problems,” the former Minister of Health said.

There are speculations that government may relax restrictions on measures it instituted including ban on public gathering, religious activities and closure of all schools in the country aimed at preventing and containing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Segbefia who led the NDC COVID-19 team to donate 30 sets of complete Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), 30 boots, 2,000 hand gloves and 100 pieces of locally produced nose masks to the Ketu South Municipal Health Directorate on behalf of former President and Flagbearer of the party, Mr John Dramani Mahama, said it was premature to lift the restrictions.

He admitted the country’s death rate was low with an encouraging recovery rate but warned that there must not be room for complacency as that could lead to a problem of false security, endangering the health of many.

Mr Segbefia alleges that currently, “there is no mass testing and there’s a drop in number of contact tracing so, we’re unable to get a better idea of how infected we are” adding, “I don’t believe that the data we have is sufficient to be making certain decisions because if you make those decisions without getting full data from mass testing process, then you could be in difficulties tomorrow.”

Mr Joseph Kwami Degley, Municipal Director of Health Services for Ketu South was grateful for the donation and said it would help the Municipality with the highest recorded cases of COVID 19 in the Volta region, to fight the virus.