Covid-19 infection rates are rising and new strains of the virus have entered the scene in the country. Treatment centres are bursting at the seams. The health system is seriously almost overwhelmed President Nana Akufo-Addo said on Sunday.
Though Ghana is not yet close to a peak seen during the first wave of infections in the middle of last year.
If they do, the president said he would impose another partial lockdown, despite worries about what that would do to one of West Africa’s largest economies.
“Our Covid-19 treatment centers have gone from having zero patients to now being full because of the upsurge in infections,” the president said. “At this current rate … our healthcare infrastructure will be overwhelmed.”
Across Africa, a second coronavirus wave is infecting twice as many people per day than at the height of last year’s first wave and has yet to peak, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rise across Africa is a cause for concern because unlike Europe and the United States, cash-strapped governments have been unable to secure supply deals for Covid-19 vaccine with manufacturers.
Akufo-Addo said details about access to vaccines and a roll out plan would be announced “very soon”.
He said that some people arriving from abroad had tested positive for “new variants” of the virus, without giving details.
Last week, Gambia recorded its first two cases of the highly infectious coronavirus variant first found in Britain, in what appears to be the first confirmation of its presence in Africa.
“Work is ongoing to determine the presence and extent of spread of the new variants in the general population,” Akufo-Addo said.
