Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association Titus Beyuo has said that persons who suspect they have Covid-19 must not be made to visit local hospitals.

He said these persons should be made to call the Covid-19 helpline instead so that a team of health professionals are sent to their residence.

This he says will reduce the rate at which local health workers, who are at a higher risk of contracting the virus yet have the least protection, get infected with Covid-19.

"Indeed those at the isolation centers know that they have this case. Somebody makes the diagnosis before sending it to them. And if you notice they have the highest level of protection.

"They go in with level 1 PPEs but unfortunately the poor doctor, the poor nurse, the cleaner in the district facility will handle a patient they do not even know has the virus and by the time the confirmation is made he or she would also have been exposed to it," he told Evans Mensa on Newsnite.

The call comes after Mr. David Tenkorang, the General Secretary for the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwifery Association disclosed that over 200 health workers have been isolated due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Dr Tenkorang, 41 persons from the said number have tested positive to the virus with one deaths recorded.

Mr. Beyuo in backing the claim that local health workers are at a higher risk said it has become necessary for the periphery staff in various hospitals to be protected.

“This is basically the point that the Medical Association has been making; that, the health care workers at the highest risk are not those at the treatment centres and the isolation centres.

“At the community level, as the virus goes up it is just natural that a lot of our workers will fall victim to it. And so if individually we can take all the measures to make sure that we decrease the spreading of the disease in the community, we will be protecting our health care workers as well.

"And we must have a clear policy; people who think have symptoms should not come to the hospital, they should call and let the system pick them up," he suggested.