The National Technical Coordinating Committee will today [Monday] meet to review arrangements to prevent the outbreak of the coronavirus.
The Committee of experts was constituted last week to plan for possible cases of the coronavirus in Ghana.
The Ministry of Health in a statement last week said the meeting will be “to review the resilience of our current arrangements to prevent an outbreak of the virus.”
The coronavirus has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO) after the outbreak was discovered and begun to spread outside China.
So far, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has designated the Ridge Hospital and the Tema General Hospital as initial case management centres.
Regional directors of health have also been instructed to designate treatment centres in their respective regions.
The Minister of Health and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration will on February 4, 2020, brief Parliament on the government’s preparedness towards dealing with the coronavirus.
Ghanaian students stranded
Meanwhile, the China chapter of National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has called on the Government to evacuate all Ghanaian students in China.
The Union expressed fears over the wellbeing of Ghanaian students in the country.
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, reopening dates for most universities in China have been postponed indefinitely, leaving international students stranded.
Several countries including the United States of America and Australia have evacuated their citizens from China.
Background
The first coronavirus case was first reported from Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019.
There have been more than 17,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 361 deaths in mainland China alone.
Outside China, there are more than 150 confirmed cases of the virus with one death in the Philippines.
Various countries have imposed travel restrictions to a varying degree like Singapore, US and Australia which are denying entry to all foreign visitors who have recently been to China.
Some countries are denying entry to foreigners travelling from mainland China whilst others are denying entry to foreigners who have visited Hubei province.
The WHO declares a Public Health Emergency of International Concern when there is “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other states through the international spread of disease.”
It has previously declared five global public health emergencies: the Swine flu in 2009, Polio in 2014, Zika in 2016 and Ebola, 2014 and 2019.