The Ghana Health Service has labelled the Tema metropolis, in the Greater Accra Region, as the current hotspot in the region with regards to the Covid-19.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service(GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma Aboagye, addressing a press conference organised by the Information ministry in Accra yesterday, said 20 districts have been hit with the virus in the region.
He said of the 89 new cases in the Greater Accra region, 40 came from routine surveillance and 49 from enhanced contact tracing.
Current hotspots in the region include Klottey Korle, Accra metro, and Kpone Katamanso.
The GHS boss reiterated that action must be intensified in the Tema metro to control the spread of the virus following the sharp rise in cases within Tema.
Retesting
Meanwhile, a retesting has been conducted in the Tema metro following the recording of the 533 cases in the jurisdiction.
Highlighting on this, Dr Kuma Aboagye said 187 have so far been tested, with 50 turning negative.
“We’re hoping that by the time we do the next two batches we’ll still have a lot of recoveries out of that group,” he noted.
More male deaths
Taking his turn, the Head of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service, Dr Badu Sarkodie, disclosed that more males are dying from pandemic.
He said among the 22 Covid-19 deaths recorded, males account for 68.2 per cent.
He further noted that males are the highest across the deaths recorded among all age groups, except the 25 to 34-year olds.
“There is clear preponderance for males in respect with COVID-19 associated deaths,” he said.
Dr Sarkodie said the age range for mortalities recorded are from nine to 82 years, with a mean age of 55.5 years and a median age of 58 years.
“The mean age for males was 52.4 years, compared with 58.1 years for females. The median age for both sexes is 58 years,” he stated.
Co-morbidities
Explaining the cause of deaths, Dr Sarkodie said only two out of the total number deaths did not have any underlying health condition.
He said 16 of the persons who died of Covid-19 had hypertension, representing a 72.7 per cent of co-morbidity. Diabetes Mellitus also accounted for 10 lives, representing a co-morbidity of 45.5 per cent, while chronic liver disease, obesity and asthma claimed two lives each, all accounting for 27.3 per cent of co-morbidity.
Stroke, prostate enlargement, acute kidney injury, interstitial pulmonary disease and congestive cardiac failure claimed a life each with a total co-morbidity of 22.5 per cent.
Ghana’s situation
As of yesterday, Ghana had recorded 427 new cases of COVID-19 within the previous two days, shooting the total number of cases to 5, 127.
Out of the 427 cases, 272 came from Obuasi in the Ashanti region.
Recoveries still remain at 494, with another 130 patients awaiting their second negative test to be declared recovered. Twenty-two people have so far died from the killer bug with active cases at 4, 611.
