Clinical Biologist and a lecturer at the Department of Medical Diagnostics at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology(KNUST), Dr. Michael Owusu has advised government to introduce a quarantine regime at the Kotoka International Airport(KIA) to passengers who tests negative from high risk COVID-19 countries.
He said this in an interview with TV3’s Emmanuel Samani on Mid Day news on Monday, April 26.
Dr. Owusu said this on the back of reports of high COVID-19 positive cases registered at the Kotoka International Airport(KIA) and the minority’s concerns to government to restrict entry to travellers from countries with high COVID-19 cases into Ghana.
He said “I would want to think that closing borders may be too difficult because of trade agreements and other economic issues but then we could introduce a quarantine. If you test negative and you are from a high risk country, you may have to be quarantined for about ten days and within ten days you will be observed and be retested again using a PCR(Polymerase Chain Reaction) or other techniques.
“And if after ten days you are negative, then we can move you from the quarantine but if within ten days you are still positive then you will have to be managed so that those who are incubating the virus and may likely slip through the airport into the country will be detected and will be managed very well. I think that this quarantine will be one of the options that may not be too expensive but then it will give us the upperhand in managing possible importation of these variants that may disturb us if we don’t handle it well”.
On the other hand Dr. Sebastian Ngmenenso Sandaare, Member of the Health Committee of Parliament has described the new incidence as worrying and an “epidemic on pandemic” to the country.
“I must say that what is happening at the Kotoka International Airport by the minority of parliament is something that is worrying, something that we as a people need to understand and realize that what is happening there, if I may say, is epidemic on pandemic, meaning that something is unusual, there is a deviation from the usual trend of positive cases that used to come in”.
“So an increase in the number of cases coming in, if you take that locality, Kotoka International Airport, what it means is that, already there, something unusual is happening that needs urgent action. It is not something that we should discuss for days before action is taken because we all know that is the route through which the two initial cases that came into this country happened, so if it is happening, an immediate action needs to be taken by the COVID-19 management team in this country led by the government, we need a very strict action” he pointed out.
Reacting to the question of what to be done to arrest the new arriving cases, Dr. Sandaare said “one action to remedy this situation is to understand, by that you quickly confirm the story that we are getting from Kotoka, is it true that these cases that are increasing, the positive cases, the origin of these cases because you have to do a test from your country of origin and when you get to Kotoka, you do another test. So does it mean that people are coming in with probably false negative tests?”.
Source: 3news
