Ghana at crossroads in the coronavirus war

It is funny how our health service is giving us only surface information. How many samples have been tested so far from the entire population? How many are tested per day, of which the positives are reported? What is the set timeline between consecutive batches of reports?

What is the disease transmission pattern like among contacts to inform real changes in our preventive protocols? For example, should we be weary more of the persons on the street we may have little or no contact with than our family and colleagues we spend a majority of our time in each day with?

Now that our casualties are not on the roof, do we have a comprehensive postmortem report on all the dead so far to inform us of the true picture of the cells and organs which may be compromised apart from the already established ones the world over? ... this can improve our management practices considerably.

What makes Noguchi a research centre when they keep testing and neglect the research components which has to do with detailed data analysis and policy designs in real-time?

In my view, the testing should be further decentralized as a matter of urgency in order to make it accessible to a larger part of the population in real-time. That's the surest way to be ahead of this virus.

What happened to the Government's plan to make use of the Gene Xpert equipment in the over 100TB testing sites in Ghana to augment the current testing regime?

In the worst-case scenario, with the virus moving to all regions as we speak, every region must have a well-equipped testing lab up and running, in the already established regional hospitals at least.