Dissolve national COVID-19 technical team; they aren’t performing – Minority NDC MPs to Akufo-Addo

The Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) Members of Parliament have called on the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to immediately dissolve the national COVID-19 technical team over non-performance.

Acting Spokesperson for the Minority on Health, Kwabena Minta Akandoh, addressing journalists in Parliament on Tuesday, February 9, 2021, over state’s response to the novel coronavirus said the national COVID-19 team and to a larger extent, government, has failed in containing the wide spread of COVID-19 compared to other countries.

“Since the outbreak of this pandemic, government has not shown competence in the management of the virus. The first two (2) cases of Covid-19 in Ghana were reported in March, 2020. This was after Government failed to be proactive in closing our borders early. Since then, Ghana’s confirmed cases has increased exponentially to 71,533 as of 8th February this year and records more than 700 newly confirmed cases daily with current active cases of 6,411”, he noted.

He added “At the last count, Ghana has lost 472 lives to the virus as of yesterday with about 137 or 29% of these deaths occurring only this year. The trend of infections and death is worrying and if nothing is done immediately to arrest the situation our outturn with covid would be a complete disaster”.

According to the Juaboso lawmaker, available records from the Ghana Health Service shows that about 32% of confirmed cases now report to medical centres sick compared to 21% in 2020.

Positivity rates for routine surveillance and enhanced contact tracing all now hover above 10%.

“This means for every 100 Ghanaians who turn out for testing or are contact traced, 10 of them have the virus. This calls for increased routine surveillance and more contact tracing before the situation gets out of hand”, Mr. Akandoh posited.

In the view of Akandoh, it was important for the President to dissolve the team and immediately set up a new one considering the rising cases of COVID-19 in the country.

According to him, the President’s move to form a technical team on political lines has been suicidal in the fight against the virus, stressing that it was about time Mr. Akufo-Addo shows leadership by urgently securing the vaccines since the whole nation was looking up to him.

“Government should as a matter of urgency dissolve the Technical Advisory Team formed in 2020 and recompose a Technical Team that is multidisciplinary and non-partisan, competent enough to direct on the management of Covid-19 in the country”, he said.

He also wants government to release enough funds to the Regional and District Health Teams to enhance contact tracing and case testing and pay all the monies promised Health workers as well as expand more management facilities and build capacity to handle the many severe cases that are likely to be confirmed.

Mr. Akandoh further wants schools to be adequately resourced and supported to make the environment safe from Covid-19.

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