COVID Kills 59 …As NHIA Boss Gets Virus

The Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Dr. Lydia Dsane-Selby has tested positive for COVID-19 according to media reports.

A source familiar with the development said staff of the NHIA have been informed of the status of their boss while contact tracing is underway. She is currently under quarantine.

She becomes the second high profile Ghanaian on record to have tested positive for the virus.

Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman Manu is currently recuperating from the virus.

Meanwhile, four more people have succumbed to the coronavirus disease with Ghana’s death toll now 58, according to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye.

Briefing journalist yesterday, Dr. Kuma-Aboagye also revealed that Ghana’s total case count is now 12, 193 with 4,326 recoveries.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye has also dismissed suggestions that the government is manipulating COVID-19 death numbers.

According to him, there is a process that people who die from the virus go through before they are finally reported to the general public.

Figures

Meanwhile, the government has strongly rejected allegations that COVID-19 death figures are being manipulated.

Pressure Group, OccupyGhana, in a statement alleged that the government is manipulating Ghana’s death numbers from the COVID-19.

The group wondered why less than 20 out of the 38 people who have died in the Ashanti region alone from COVID-19 have been added to the national tally.

“There is cause to suspect that the death numbers are being massaged. The reported 54 deaths so far cannot be right. For instance, even though 38 deaths have been reported from the Ashanti Region alone, less than 20 of those deaths are included in the national count!

“If the public suspects under-reporting etc, there will be a loss of trust in the reporting system and that will have consequences that will influence public behavioural responses.

But Presidential advisor on health and member of the presidential COVID-19 task force Dr Nsiah Asare said figures are not generated either by the Ghana Health Service or by the Presidential task force.

Speaking at a press briefing Tuesday he said: “the figures that you see, that’s what we put forward.”

“We don’t generate any figures from the policy level. The presidential task-force for that matter from the presidency doesn’t generate any figures. There is an implementing agency, so this Covid-19 fight is led by Ghana health service, the teaching hospitals and the ministry of health is the policy level who is also organizing them and then we have a presidential task-force.”

Dr Asare added “we see the figures as you have seen here today and then we then use the figures to plan and monitor whatever is going on.  We then target the regions and the districts where we are to send resources.”

“We don’t generate any figures; we don’t manipulate any figures at the presidency or for that matter the presidential task-force level. When the figures are put forward, we take it, plan with it, monitor and then supervise whatever is going on in the country.”