Coronavirus: Recorded cases would have skyrocketed if Mahama was president - John Boadu

General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu believes that Ghana would have recorded a higher rate of confirmed cases of the novel Coronavirus, similar to what is happening in European countries if the National Democratic Congress (NDC) were to be in power.

He explained that the opposition NDC, under John Dramani Mahama, would have worsened the situation for the country because they shared the same belief as other European countries that went in for their citizens in China at the beginning of the pandemic.

#BringBackStudents

Speaking on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, John Boadu asserted that the NDC strongly entreated the Akufo-Addo government at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, to evacuate Ghanaian students stranded in the Wuhan Province in China, and even went further to create a hashtag on social media.

“Those countries like Iran, UK, Italy, Spain and USA that reasoned like the NDC and brought their citizens back from China, have you seen their situation today? The number of COVID-19 cases would have skyrocketed and spiraled out of control just as its happening in those countries if NDC under Mahama was in power,” he asserted.

Proactive Gov't

Touching on contact tracing, John Boadu intimated that a lot of the advanced countries are now focusing on contact tracing strategy, placing Ghana ahead of them in terms of being proactive.

“As we speak now, the enhanced surveillance and contact tracing that Ghana rolled out about two weeks ago, is now being replicated in other foreign countries. In the UK, if you live with someone who has tested positive, you don’t have the right to go to the hospital to test whether you have the virus or not. They don’t have voluntary testing kits unless you are sick and hospitalised or you are showing symptoms of the virus before you will be tested. This is what is happening in the UK,” he indicated.

Current Case Count

The country's case count is now at 834, this includes 99 recoveries, 4 moderate to severe cases as well as 234, who are well and responding to treatment.

The mortality rate has however increased by one figure, bringing the total deaths to nine (9).

This was confirmed by the Ghana Health Service on its official COVID-19 update page on April 18th, 2020,

The GHS is supervising the completion of a backlog of laboratory samples which have been picked for testing as part of the COVID-19 testing exercise. This is after some 57,000 samples have already been successfully tested as of April 15th 2020.

In the first batch of this backlog, an additional 198 have been found to be positive. This will bring Ghana’s total case count to 834 at the moment. The general public is however advised that this does not represent new infections that are occurring. It represents results from tests of a backlog of samples.

The laboratories have been working day and night to test this large number of samples. Hopefully in the next few days, all the testing would be completed.

Total samples tested so far now stands at 60, 916 with 1.37 % testing positive.

Regions that have reported cases and breakdown are as follows: Greater Accra - 685, Ashanti - 59, Eastern - 51, Northern - 11, Volta - 9, Upper East - 8, Upper West - 8, Central - 1, Western - 1 and North East - 1.