The African Centre for Health Policy Research and Analysis wants the government to institute an investigation into the recent spike in the number of COVID-19 cases recorded at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).
Frontier Healthcare Services, the managers of Ghana’s COVID-19 testing programme at the KIA, in a letter to the Managing Director of the Ghana Airports Company Limited, drew attention to the high number of persons who tested positive at the Airport, despite attaining negative results from the countries they travelled from.
The Executive Director of the African Centre for Health Policy Research and Analysis, Dr. Thomas Anaba, has called for an investigation into the incident to help ascertain the veracity of the results.
“To be sure these are really positive tests, we need a third-party research laboratory to take the samples and rerun them. If they re-run them and it is positive, it means that perhaps from the country of origin, the people managed to get their lab reports indicating they are COVID negative because they think it is very imperative to come to Ghana. I am calling for investigations to be done on the samples that came positive to ascertain the veracity.”
The Frontier Healthcare Services recently alerted the country’s health officials of a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases recorded at the airport.
The company said it recorded the highest daily number of positive COVID-19 cases at the airport on Saturday, April 24, 2021.
Prior to that, the highest number was on Wednesday, April 21, 2021.
According to the company, the rate of positive cases being recorded at the airport in recent times is “unprecedented.”
The Minority has asked health officials to immediately consider the imposition of restrictions on arrivals from countries with high infection rates.
“The government should also consider a careful examination of the data and, where necessary, impose travel restrictions from regions that have travellers presenting fake or poor test results.”
“Government should also consider travel restrictions on countries currently experiencing high COVID-19 infection rates to reduce the possibility of importing COVID-19 infections into the country. Some countries have already implemented these measures and Ghana should also consider doing the same,” it said in a statement.
The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu has however given assurances of the deployment of enhanced measures at Ghana’s airport to curb the surge in COVID-19 cases.
