COVID-19: Over 200 persons awaiting second negative test to be discharged – GHS
Over 200 persons recovering from COVID-19 are awaiting a second negative test in order to be discharged.
This was made known by the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye, at a press briefing today, May 05, 2020.
The current case count in the country stands at 2,719, with 294 recoveries and 18 deaths.
Addressing the media, the Ghana Health Service Boss indicated that over 129,000 persons have been tested so far.
“Currently we have about 294 of the patients who have recovered after testing negative on two consecutive times and we currently have more than 200 patients awaiting their second negative test so that they can also be declared recovered and discharged,” he said.
“One of the key areas of intervention is isolation; where people who are positive and are asymptomatic or do not have any underlying conditions are either managed at home or sent to an isolation centre. Currently, for our isolation situation, we have 453 patients across the country at various isolation centres. 339 are in Accra, we have 85 in Eastern Region and about nine in Ashanti.”
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Noguchi clears backlog of COVID-19 samples
The Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Ghana’s largest lab testing for coronavirus in the country has completed testing the backlog of about 18,000 samples, giving it room to now test and report on samples within 24 hours, Dr Aboagye also revealed.
He stated that the last batch of the backlog was cleared over the weekend and the results are part of the new 550 cases confirmed in the last Ghana Health Service update.
“As at now, we have recorded 2,719 cases across the country. This covers all the cases that were diagnosed since the first case was diagnosed on the 12th of March. Since the last update, we’ve had an increase of about 550 cases and this has come out of the nearly 18,000 tests conducted in the last few days over the weekend, wiping out the entire backlog at Noguchi,” he said.
