Coronavirus: KCCR Don Proposes Regional Or Community Lockdown

A Senior Research Fellow at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research (KCCR) Dr. Michael Owusu has prescribed an opposing observation to the Ghana Medical Association’s calls for a total lockdown in across the country saying he would rather support a region or community lockdown since the available data does not look too scary.

Dr. Michael Owusu warned stakeholders to desist from putting undue pressure on the government to announce a lockdown since Ghana as a country must look at introducing an innovative lockdown quite different from what the advanced countries are implementing.

Speaking on OTECFm’s morning show program ‘NYANSAPO’ on Thursday, March 26, 2020, Dr. Michael Owusu observed that,” I won’t subscribe to a total lockdown because we have to consider whole lots of factors. The social pressure and economic mitigating factors facing the country need to be considered entirely’’.

‘’Hunger and other related diseases could even cause more deaths so we need to be innovative to our approach to the lockdown”, he told the programme’s host, Captain Koda.

The Researcher who doubles as a Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology wants a situation where affected regions, communities, the aged who are more susceptible to the COVID-19 and patients with serious complications to be partially locked down.

Dr. Michael Owusu, however, appealed to the corporate institutions including the Telecos and Banks to champion comprehensive social responsibility programs to augment the central government in providing support to the research and health facilities in the country. He charged the Nana Addo government to make her challenges known to the institutions to offer their support especially through the purchase of the diagnostic machines used in testing one’s status on the Coronavirus.

Touching on the controversies generated by COVID-19 figures, Dr. Michael Owusu jumped to the defence of the government adding that the Ministry of Information has no interest in massaging the figures to reducing the anxiety amongst the people. He hinted that the figures of the reported cases would continue to increase because the contact traces alone was around 829 populations.

---Ghana/otecfmGhana.com/Asante-Yeboah Benedict