Ghana records 271 fresh COVID-19 cases in one day — week after lifting lockdown

Ghana recorded 271 new cases of COVID-19 within 24 hours, a week after lifting the lockdown in Accra, the country’s capital city, and Kumasi.

This is the highest single day toll the country has recorded in the coronavirus outbreak.

The cases which were confirmed on Sunday brings the total number of infections in the country to 1,550.

In total, Ghana recorded 508 additonal cases in the week the lockdown was lifted.

GhanaWeb quotes the Ghana Health Service (GHS) as saying that while a total number of 11 people have died from the disease, 155 have recovered.

The service said 62 percent of infected persons are male while 38 percent are female. It said 84 percent of the cases have no travel history.

Last week, Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo lifted a three-week lockdown on the basis of “improved coronavirus testing.”

The Ghanaian president had said nonessential businesses in Accra and Kumasi could reopen but under guidelines of social distancing.

He said Ghanaians should make use of face masks in public places.

“In view of our ability to undertake aggressive contact of infected persons, the enhancement of our capacity to test, the expansion in the numbers of our treatment and isolation centres, our better understanding of the dynamism of the virus, the ramping up our domestic capacity to produce our own personal protective equipment, sanitisers and medicines, the modest successes chalked at containing the spread of the virus in Accra and Kumasi, and the severe impact of the poor and vulnerable, I have taken the decision to life the three-week-old restriction on movements in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area and Kasoa, and the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area and the contiguous districts, with effect from 1am on Monday, 20th April,” he had said.

At the time the president lifted the lockdown, Ghana had 1,042 cases of the disease.

The country is the first to lift the restriction on movement in the West African region.