Coronavirus: A letter to our leaders

The past few days has been rough for most Ghanaians. The uncertainty of living healthy tomorrow struggles with the hope that everything will be fine. The President has taken some bold steps to help us fight the Corona virus together. Health workers and experts are doing all they can and Spiritual leaders are doing their best in support of the fight against this virus.

Sadly, the situation has increased within the past few days. The pace of its increase is minimal, perhaps an increase in terms of ones, yet this calls for more strident measures to be taken. The government is doing well against the “huge” threats; border control and wonderful measures at the aviation. However, I fear we are leaving the “little foxes” which rather “spoils the vine”.

Gloves and the spread of COVID 19

I fear education in the area of using gloves is one that needs to be revised. To the best of my knowledge, the way Ghanaians currently use the gloves poses a lot more threat than if it were not used at all.

You see mates, drivers and traders among other individuals wearing gloves as protection. These people by the nature of their work exchange money throughout the day to thousands of people. As they wear these gloves to go about their normal duties, do they wash them, sanitize or even change them? I bet the answer is scarier than it could be. There are people who may even reuse these gloves countless times.

A quick logical intuition is to imagine the virus on the gloves of a mate early in the morning. The gloves are used throughout the day and this mate contacts over 500 passengers most of which do not wear gloves. The same mate might handle the door and touch seats that will be touched by hundreds of people. Is this not more deadly in aggravating the spread? We can consider the case of food vendors who wear gloves to collect money, hold ladles and package foods during the day.

A lot of people are heeding to the advice of the ministry of health but I find this glitch in the interpretation of this advice. Gloves is designed to be used once and then discarded. If it is repeated for a service, it becomes an agent of transmission. If you cannot have the luxury of changing your gloves then washing of hands and sanitizing remains the best fight against covid 19

The number is increasing and I am certain it can get a lot worse if we do not stop the improper use of the hand gloves.

I plead with the leaders of this fight to add the right use of gloves to the campaign.