GHS: Don’t ignore face masks completely

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said that the decision by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to make the wearing of face masks not mandatory does not mean a total disregard for wearing them, especially in a crowded environment.

He made the call during the Minister’s Press Briefing yesterday in Accra to update the country about Ghana’s COVID status and interventions put in place to ensure the safety of the public.

The GHS Director-General, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, explained COVID-19 is still around, even though the number of cases in the country has reduced.

It would be recalled that during the 28^th update on COVID-19 measures, the President officially declared that the wearing face masks was no longer mandatory, starting Monday, March 28.

The wearing and patronage of nose masks in the country’s capital, Accra, dropped considerably less than 24 hours after the announcement. The situation has since remained the same.

It is in this direction that Dr. Kuma-Aboaygye advised that Ghanaians to wear their face masks, especially when they found themselves in enclosed and congested public places.

“The President said it’s not compulsory; he didn’t say don’t wear it. The risk is still there; we recommend that wherever possible, wear your mask and, especially, when you are in a congested and an enclosed place,” he advised.

“We encourage that masks should continuously be worn in schools because those below 15 years have not been vaccinated, and so they still remain potential victims,” the GHS Director-General added.

Vaccines update

Additionally, he revealed that Ghana had so far received 30,378,478 vaccines and, of the number, 23,742,148 had been distributed while 6,636,330 are available.

He, however, expressed dissatisfaction that only 14,268,269 had been administered.

“Unfortunately, the vaccine uptake has reduced, and that is so because of the low-risk perception. But we want to highlight that the best time to get vaccinated is now,” he said.

He also said about one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been discarded so far in the country.

“There’s always vaccine wastage; it’s either it breaks … or storage is not optimum, and so you discard them. But there is a percentage of 10 percent. The proportion that we have so far discarded is 4.4 percent. So, we are way within the normal range of vaccine wastage that is acceptable. And that comes up to about one million doses,” he said.

“But if you look at the fact that some of the vaccines arrive two to three months to expiry, it is expected that you will get some wastage along,” he indicated.

COVID status

Dr. Kuma-Aboagye also told journalists that Ghana is currently experiencing low numbers of recorded cases of COVID-19, adding that the daily reported cases is less than 20 while no critical or severe case has been recorded.

He revealed that the cases among international arrivals is also seeing a significant decline.

“We have so far recorded about 161,172 cases since the outbreak, and we’ve done over 2.4 million tests. Of this, 161,000 have recovered, but, unfortunately, we have lost 1,445. Currently, our latest active cases is 40, and no severe and critical cases,” he said.