Open Letter To The President Of Ghana

Mr. President,

I bring you special greetings from my humble abode and I trust you are increasing in wisdom. I am writing to you as a citizen and not a spectator; I believe as a citizen, I must understand what exactly is going on.

Dear Sir, I must commend all your efforts to help the people of Ghana especially in the times we are in. I believe many Ghanaians like myself, are enjoying up to 50% relief in electricity tariffs and some are also enjoying free water supply, among others. You are doing very well.

As a President that has the nation at heart, I believe you have great men with you that have an influence on decisions you make to help the nation to progress. However, I sit in the comfort of my home confused with some decisions you take. This is because we are rightfully informed by you that most of the decisions you take are based on science and data. Of course, I may not know the science but I believe the Ghana Health Service(GHS) provides us with the data on their website unless, your data is different from theirs.

Dear Sir, most of my questions will be from the data I have gathered from the GHS Website. In the month of May, the country recorded several recovery cases which is in a positive direction for us as a nation, and we give thanks to God for that and of course, to you Mr. President for the good job done. However, His Excellency, I would like to find out if you eased the ban on social gathering restrictions because our recovery rate is high (definitely not higher than our active cases), because our death rate is low or for some other reasons that only science can support because the data shows something different.

Dear Sir, maybe I am wrong, but I thought the positivity rate is what shows how fast or slow the Virus is spreading in our midst. If that is right, then I believe the virus is really spreading fast among Ghanaians. As at 4th May 2020, our positivity rate was around 1.86% but as at May 30th, our positivity rate had increased to 3.69% which for me, is not a good sign. Looking at the positivity rate frightens my heart, though we are to spread calm and not fear. I have realized per the statistics of the GHS that, the virus is spreading quite faster than it was in March and April.

His Excellency,

▪️Should we be at peace because just 0.48% of those who get infected will die? (Of which most of them already have underlying health conditions)

▪️Should we spread calm and not fear because about 36.52% of those who get the Virus will recover?

Mr. President, I know you have given several precautionary measures by which we can protect ourselves from this Virus, but i want to humbly ask, What measures is the government putting in place to reduce the positivity rate since it keeps increasing. Looking at the rate at which the virus keeps increasing, there is a fear that we might hit a positivity rate of 5 to 6% plus if we only focus on recoveries and not the infection/positivity rate (the rate at which it is spreading).

Dear Sir, I am fully aware that you are well acquainted with the Data, but let me just provide this one to help you understand my letter. As at 19th April 2020, we had 68,591 people who had tested for Covid-19 and out of this number 1,042 people tested positive for the Virus which represents 1.52% positivity rate. Three days later, that is the 22nd of April, the GHS published a new data. In this Data we had 88,188 people who had been tested. This shows that between 19th April and 22nd April, we had 19,597 newly tested cases out of which 237 tested positive. This represents 1.21% if we consider the number of new cases and the newly tested persons. Interestingly, this test reduced our positivity rate which was at 1.52% on the 19th of April to 1.45%. This was a good sign for me who only looks at the data without Science attached. Again, let's look at this, Mr. President, as at May 24 2020, we had tested 202,130 people out of which 6, 964 had tested positive (There were series of test done between 28th April and 24th of May).

His excellency, A day after, that is, 25th May 2020, the data from the GHS showed that we tested 1,253 more people which took our number of tested persons to 203,383. Sadly, out of the 1,253 people tested, 153 of them tested positive which represents 12.21% and brought our positivity rate to 3.50%.

Mr. President, if we look at the cases in the last week of May, one thing is certain and that is, we are not vigorously testing people as we did in March and April and even in the early weeks of May but we are recording higher cases. Let me reiterate the newly tested people and the number of positive cases recorded in the last week of May, (26th to 30th) 2020; we tested 15,042 persons and out of this, 953 persons tested positive which represents 6.34%, this was within 5 days. Remember, that on April 22nd (probably within 3 days), we tested 19,597 people and 237 people tested positive i.e 1.21%.

Dear Sir, from the above, I humbly ask, what is happening?

It seems we will get more positive cases if we test more people so why aren't we testing many people?

Has our testing capacity gone down?

Will our infection rate go down?

I thought we reached our peak so why are we recording cases in hundreds almost everyday?

Mr. President, I know the letter is a bit lengthy as it contains my heartfelt issues. However, it would be of great delight if all my concerns are attended to as I look forward to receiving a positive feedback from your end soon. God bless you Sir

Long Live Ghana

Long Live the President of the Republic of Ghana

A CONCERNED CITIZEN

KYEI BAFFOUR EDMUND [KOBY RHEMA]