Ministers In Fear Over COVID-19 …Sekondi-Takoradi MCE Dead …Health Minister Hospitalized

Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Ghana’s Minister for Health, has responded to reports that is on admission at the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) because he had tested positive for COVID-19 by saying he is very fine and that all he needs now is rest and his usual medication.

The Health Minister made the denial when he was called by Broadcast Journalist Afia Pokua of the Despite Media Group. “Spoke to the Minister of Health. He says he’s fine and doesn’t have COVID but only needed rest and his usual medication,” Afia Pokua disclosed on her Facebook wall Saturday.

Multiple sources near the Minister continue to tell journalists that he has tested positive for COVID-19 but was treating it himself until it started to get serious  and was admitted at the hospital last week Tuesday.

He is 64 years and the current Member of Parliament for Dormaa Central.

News that the Health Minister himself has tested positive for COVID-19 for a while now but continued to go around his normal duties including attending Parliament and Cabinet meetings has generated some level of anxiety among his colleague Ministers who have had recent contact with him.

Anxiety over whether the Health Minister may have spread the COVID-19 virus among his colleagues heightened when it was reported around same time that the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE) for Sekondi-Takoradi had died of the same COVID-19.

The late MCE, Anthony Kobina Kurentsi Sam, died a few weeks after his personal and official driver tested positive for COVID-19. While the driver was placed in isolation when he tested positive, his boss continued to report for work.

When the MCE started to also show symptoms of CIVOD-19, he went for medical treatement and was transferred to a health facility in Accra according to a narration form the Presiding Member for the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, Kwesi Buckman.

A-Plus Wades In

Leader of The People’s Project (TTP), Kwame A-Plus, has waded into reports of the Health Minister testing positive for COVID-19 by saying he should be sent to his constituency to seek medical attention there to see and feel for himself the poor state of the health facilities there.

A Plus wrote on his Facebook page: “He is MP for Dormaa, if he has COVID-19 why don’t you send him to Dormaa district hospital, the same hospital people who voted for him will go to when they test positive for the disease?” He posted: Commenting on government’s resolve to keep the University of Ghana hospital closed prior to the invasion of COVID-19, A Plus said “Open the UGMC hospital for the general public you said no you won’t because Mahama built it. The ordinary people can die but you are there receiving treatment. Smh!!!”.

More Infections

The General Secretary of the Ghana Registered Association (GRNA), David Tenkorang Twum has disclosed that the number of health workers testing positive for COVID is on the rise.

“The figures keep rising, we are not surprised because people are not listening. As we speak, we have about 168 nurses and midwives being infected, both public and private”

He continued: “Now the trajectory of the disease condition is changing, and as you may recall we used to do effective contact tracing and the rest of it. Now what we have observed is that people are reporting to the hospital with the disease… if you like they come either assytomatically or sytomatically”, Mr. Tenkorang spoke to Joy News.

As at Sunday night, the Ghana Health Service said the total number of infections stood at 11, 422 with a total of 51 deaths and 4,156 recoveries.