The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has cautioned the public to observe COVID-19 protocols during the festive season as many countries from where people visit Ghana are experiencing surges.

According to the GHS there is high risk in contracting and spreading the virus during the festive season and therefore people should protect themselves during the period.

At a press briefing on Sunday (December 18, 2022) to update the public on the COVID-19 virus, the Director General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said Ghana currently has four active cases of the virus as of Friday, December 16, 2022.

But that is not to mean that there is no risk of the disease, “but let us not be complacent with the four, we started with two [in 2020], so you never know how it goes.

“We [currently] don’t have any severe cases and we don’t have any critical cases in our facilities,” Dr Kuma-Aboagye said.

Ghana’s situation on COVID-19

The COVID-19 virus has been around for the past three years and even though the number is down in Ghana, it is up in some other countries.

It is unclear when the pandemic will end.

Ghana has seen a very significant decline in the last three months with a low active number of cases.

Ghana has not recorded any deaths for a while now.

“We are here to explain to you the risk we face with Christmas, our own gatherings, our practices and the fact that we are going to have a lot of people coming into the country,” Dr Kumas-Aboagye said at the press briefing.

He said there is a potential for a new variant as it was experienced towards Christmas in 2021 when the Omicron variant was detected in Ghana.

He said the adherence to protocols is quite low in the country.

Vaccination

On vaccination, he said 21 million doses of vaccines have so far been administered and the country does not have the herd immunity.

Currently, Ghana has done about 171,000 confirmed cases and 2.5 million tests have been done.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye said 169,000 of the confirmed cases have recovered with 1,461 cases of death.

As of December 16, 2022 the active cases in Ghana were four “but let us not be complacent with the four, we started with two, so you never know how it goes.

“We don’t have any severe cases and we don’t have any critical cases in our facilities,” he added.

Surges in other countries

In the last 28 days, Japan has recorded about 3.2 million cases, US 1.57 million, France 1.49 million, China almost one million, Italy 0.85 million and Germany 0.77 million.

According to Dr Kuma-Aboagye, these are places where Ghana receives a significant number of visitors from and so that poses as a risk for Ghana, hence the need to prepare and protect people.