Coronavirus: Health Economist Calls For Intensive Social Distancing

A Health Economist, Nana Kofi Quakyi has called for a more intensified social distancing advise which Ghanaians have been told to practice for a more effective way of curbing the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

The total number of confirmed cases in the country currently is nine.

According to the Ghana Health Service, the infected persons are in isolation, receiving treatment and are recovering.

On The Point of View on Wednesday, Nana Kofi Quakyi advised that community transmission of the virus will be prevented if social distancing is intensified as early as possible.

“It's not even a question of recommending. It's where we would have to go eventually because the reality here is that in fighting this disease, we don't have a vaccine or cure so if you have ongoing community transmissions, you have to interrupt the transmission somehow. If we're not able to get a hand of it quick enough, then it will be necessary to have intensive social distancing,” he said.

Throwing more light on how safe or not Ghanaians are in terms of how far the government has gone with the contacts that have been traced, he noted that “It depends on how accurate the tracing has been. If we traced 381 and that is everyone who was contacted, then we are safe or the risk is somehow mitigated. But if it's not 100% accurate, then there's always the risk of ongoing community transmission in which case, some degree of social distancing will be necessary until we identify all these contacts or until enough time has passed during the social distancing regime that the people who are sick have now recovered and are no longer infectious.”

---citinewsroom