The Information Minister has said the reason for imposing the partial lockdown restrictions in the Greater Accra Region, Kasoa and Greater Metropolitan Kumasi was to carry out enhanced contact tracing and testing activities to determine the infection rate of Covid-19.

Kojo Oppong Nrkumah to Emefa Apawu on Joy News’ ‘Lockdown Special’ on Sunday that imposing the partial lockdown helped in determining the infectious rate of the virus.

“We needed to have clarity on what our infection rate or positivity rate is. You noticed that in many jurisdictions [around the world] where they were not able to set themselves up early, by the time they start examining what is going on the positivity rate or the infection rate is pretty high and a lot of people who will be getting it or who will now be accounting for it will have high viral loads; showing up in the hospital while the hospitals are not able to contain all of it.”

“We sought to impose these restrictions to get ahead of it and not because we had recorded cases.”

He revealed that government and health authorities leading the fight against Covid-19, in addition to determining the infection rate, other elements were identified while parts of Ghana were on partial lockdown.

“Understanding the dynamism of the virus, understanding the geographic footprint and establishing any current and potential hotspots of the virus as well,” he said.

Mr Oppong Nkrumah further disclosed that looking at the data at the time, Ghana had recorded 834, the infection rate was about 1.37%.

“While the composite was about 1.37%, if you disaggregate it, [those categorised as] ‘routine surveillance’, who were prior to lockdown falling sick and coming to hospital, the figure was about 2.25% out of the 15,000 people who said they had symptoms.”

“Then those that we quarantined, the infection rate was almost 6%. But those that we went out in the ‘at risk population’, it was 0.86% at least as at when 834 cases were recorded.”

As a result of imposing the partial lockdown, the Information Minister said that it is clear what the infection rate is and the findings revealed that most who tested positive have been asymptotic, emphasising the importance of imposing the restrictions.

“We have clarity of what are our positivity or our infection rate is,” he added.

“On top of that, the majority of people we are finding are people who are not sick.” 

“It is important to get those because if you don’t have robust testing to find people aggressively to get ahead of the virus, you will wait and people will fall sick and come to the hospital and that’s when your health structure would get overwhelmed.”