Over 6,000 people who came into contact with coronavirus patients in Accra and Kumasi have been traced and their samples taken for testing.
“As at yesterday, over 6,000 samples had been taking for testing. So testing is currently ongoing all over the country,” Dr. Patrick Aboagye, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, said at a news briefing on Friday morning.
These contacts were traced by a team of about 300 people.
He also disclosed that 538 people who were also under mandatory quarantine had been tested.
“We are hoping that within the next day… all the tests would have been done and the results will be shared with all the people in the hotel and the preparation for the discharge will be done based on the results that we have,” the
Ghana has so far recorded five deaths from 204 known cases of the novel coronavirus.
All five deceased persons had underlying chronic medical conditions.
The Greater Accra Region has most of the cases with 183 followed by the Northern Region with 10, the Ashanti Region with nine, the Upper West Region with one and the Eastern Region one.
Most of the cases are reported from routine enhanced surveillance activities.
The cases from travellers under mandatory quarantine remain 89.
The government is currently engaged in what it calls enhanced contact tracing.
In line with this, the Government has also begun processes to expand the number of testing facilities for the virus across the country.
The move is meant to facilitate speedy testing of contacts that have been traced so far.
Though the government has stepped up its contact tracing efforts to identify possible cases of the novel coronavirus, the Noguchi Medical Research Institute and the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research remain the only testing centres.