With Most Countries still at Lock-down due to the Covid-19 impact, Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, has lifted the three weeks lock down which has been enforced since Mar. 30, 2020, in its two biggest cities - Accra and Kumasi, starting from 1 AM local time on Monday Apr. 20.
Non-essential businesses will now be allowed to open while the wearing of masks is encouraged. But there are still bans on large gatherings and schools will remain closed.
In his seventh address to the nation since the first two cases were confirmed on Mar. 12, 2020, president Nana Akufo-Addo said his decision was based on the country’s “ability to undertake aggressive contact tracing of infected persons, the enhancement of our capacity to test, the expansion in the numbers of our treatment and isolation centers.”
The president also said he was concerned with the “severe impact on the poor and vulnerable”
This makes Ghana, the first country in Africa to ease its lockdown at a time others such as Zimbabwe and Nigeria have extended. Aside from the lockdown, Ghana has made aggressive testing of suspected cases central to its coronavirus response.
“We have till date traced some 86,000 contacts, out of which we have test results of 68,591 contacts…We are ranked number one in Africa in [the] administering of tests per million people,” president Akufo-Addo said.
Rigorous testing in Ghana has so far helped identify 1,042 cases of the coronavirus, with nine deaths and 99 recoveries. At the end of March when the lockdown came into effect, it had confirmed only 161 cases. This rise in cases had many expecting the announcement of an extension of the lockdown not its end.
By banking on its testing and isolation capacity, the government has placed its confidence in the public’s adherence to social distancing and hygiene protocols to ride out the coronavirus storm.
4/20/2020 - 6:12pm
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