The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has called for an urgent scale-up of free enhanced testing in all communities across the country.

The Association’s General Secretary, Justice Yankson in an interview on Joy FM’s Midday News Tuesday, stressed that the rapid surge of Covid-19 cases in the country is alarming.

Thus, government must strategise and quickly identify the hotspots communities and carry out rigorous testing in such areas.

“We can strategically map out certain areas and go in and test as many as we can. We cannot test everybody, but once we identify the key hotspots, we have to go in, working together with the data we have obtained.

“This is very important because, if access to testing becomes difficult because of issues of financing, if we don’t take time, we might be in for a huge trouble,” he said.

Dr Yankson also charged government to move beyond appealing to citizens and start enforcing the safety protocols.

“The Delta variant spreads very quickly and looking at the trend, we are hitting our peak, so the avenue for us to break this current train of transmission will mean that we have to stick keenly to the safety protocols.

“As individuals, we may do our best but some may be recalcitrant and that is where the enforcement would have to come in. The two would have to complement each other, we can’t just talk to people when only a few of our people have been vaccinated and the masses that have not, are not adhering to the protocols,” he stressed.

This comes as the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCIP) warned that the Delta variant has taken over in community transmission of the Covid-19 virus in Ghana.

The Delta variant has, particularly, been blamed for the third wave of the virus in the country, with more critically ill patients and more deaths.

The study also found that the delta strain constitutes about 90 per cent of community spread in the country.

Director of WACCBIP, Prof. Gordon Awandare said the dominance of the Delta strain is inevitable.

He, however, says the Center is on high alert for another variant that was first observed in Mauritius.

“This was just a matter of time, and our data is just confirming what was inevitable because everywhere Delta has been, it has taken over.

“What was also interesting for us was that there is another variant which was taking over and then Delta has come and basically suppressed that one but we need to keep our eye out for it. It’s called the B11318 and it is a variant that has been around for a while and we need to keep an eye on it,” he said

Currently, Ghana's active Covid-19 cases stand at 6,276 with 844 deaths.