Hospitals under construction in the Ashanti Region are being converted into Covid-19 treatment centers, as the region’s case count rises.

It comes as 40 workers of the construction firm on the regional hospitals project test positive for the virus.

Ashanti Region as at July 10, 2020 had recorded 5,254 Covid-19 positive cases with 58 deaths, the highest for any region.

The death toll has prompted the Ghana Health Service to launch investigations into the increasing trend.

Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang Manu says a lot has gone into planning on Covid-19 including the near-completion of 250-bed capacity hospitals in both Fomena and Bekwai.

“What we have to do is to continue to plan for further emergencies. We’ve got to a point where our centres we have managed to create in the Ashanti region are getting a bit choked because of the region becoming a hotspot. So we’ve planned to set up and expand our case management centres," he said.

He told journalists the facilities would be available for use in two weeks, pending provision of the necessary logistics to operationalise them.

“We wanted to complete the resource facility in Bekwai and some places are such that we can quickly turn them into treatment centres to use temporarily until we get our own treatment centre somewhere else.  We are very happy with Bekwai and we believe as they have told us, we believe in the next two weeks we should be able to keep people in there and support the fight.

“We are getting Fomena back, and we’re going to see that area somewhat are getting close to completion and we believe we can utilize that place to actually hold and prepare people for treatment in there,” the Minister stated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Manu is unhappy about Ghanaians’ apathy towards the disease despite heavy investment by government to fight the virus.

He wants the citizenry to complement state’s efforts by adhering to all safety protocols including wearing of face masks and social distancing.

“We’ve invested so much in fact in this battle. The president has invested not only money but his time, his energy. If you look at the investment we’ve made and the way Ghanaians are treating the matter, it’s like we’re not complementing the efforts of government,” said the Minister.