Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare says Ghana’s 68,591 tested cases include duplicate cases of testing.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express show, he explained that some individuals had several tests carried out on them to prove they were really cured of the virus, thus contributing to the high number of recorded tests.

“Out of the 68,591 tested cases … it includes duplicate tests because, as I said, when somebody is tested and is isolated and being treated, after 14 days you do a second test, the person can be positive.

“If he’s positive, he’s still counted as a test. So you don’t count the individual, you count the number of tests. This means that the number of patients will definitely be less than the number of tests,” he explained.

There have been doubts about the number of cases tested with regards to the daily testing capacities of the two main testing centres.

Some critics have also said the Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research in Accra and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research, currently, the only two testing centres in Ghana, are not enough.

Speaking on PM Express, Dr Nsiah-Asare said more testing facilities were being built across the country to speed up testing and the release of results and to reduce Ghana’s backlog of about 18,000 awaiting results.

“There is a backlog, the President told you there’s a backlog of about 18,000, so the President told you the truth, what is there, and that is the reason why we are bringing in a lot of laboratories on board so that we’ll not have backlog…” he said on Tuesday evening.