A pharmacist has called for new strategies to help curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Ghana.

Kwame Sarpong Asiedu who is also a Fellow of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), said the surge of the virus in the country is as a result of the decrease in testing and isolations.

“That is the problem we are facing because we are not testing and because of that people are not also isolating, they are spreading more than ordinarily, they would do.”

Current reports indicate that Ghana has recorded a total of 56,981 cases with 341 deaths as at Friday, January 15.

The Ghana Health Service on Thursday announced that 60% of beds in Covid-19 designated centres were full due to the sharply rising of the disease.

Speaking to Samson Lardy Anyenini on Newsfile Saturday, Mr Asiedu noted that most people turn to friends, collogues and relative in the medical field for help when they exhibit the symptoms instead of going to the hospital.

“So they are not testing, and in effect, such people are also spreading the disease because they are not isolating.”

The CDD fellow also noted that the country at the moment does not have the luxury of vaccinating everyone hence the need to encourage more testing and isolation where need be.

“The point is we need another strategy to try as much as possible to be able to capture the level of infection in the general population.”

He observed that people are currently tested mostly because they are moving out of the country to other countries and therefore require a test to enable them to travel.

“For instance, you require a test to go to Canada, Dubai, China so people are testing to leave the country. So you have just about 10 per cent of the total test that is happening in-country.” 

The pharmacist said even though the country’s mortality rate may still be low as compared to other countries, “they are very influential.”

He hinted a need for a new strategy as the country is not that endowed with human resources.

“We are losing human resources that we cannot afford to replace almost immediately.”

“My colleague pharmacist who have lost their lives, my colleague doctors, nurses who have lost their lives, I know at least 30 of them. These are health human resource.” 

He also called on parent and teachers to help in the educating children on the need to constantly wear facemasks and observe the protocols as “we cannot perpetually lock our children.”