Director of the WACBIP, Professor Gordon Awandare
Director of the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACBIP), Professor Gordon Awandare has indicated that he is unable to say that the Covid-19 infection rate has been brought under control.
Although he said the infection rate has been stabilized, until the numbers begin to drop the country cannot relax thinking that the pandemic has been brought under control.
Asked whether Ghana has the situation under control, he said “I wouldn’t say we have the situation under control. I think that if you look at the number of cases it seems plateaued, they are not going up anymore but they haven’t started coming down like we will like them to look.
“So I think that we have stabilized I wouldn’t say we have brought it under control until we see the numbers dropping drastically , we cannot be comfortable and say we have it under control.”
Prof Awandare further said that the deadly Delta variant is now dominating the entire country.
He said sequenced samples so far indicate that the Delta is everywhere in the country
“What we are seeing is that Delta variant is now dominant all over the place. We have sequenced samples from Cape Coast, Takoradi, Kumasi, even Upper East Region. Delta is all over the place now.
“If you look at the diseases severity the samples that are severe to critical, nearly all of them are Delta.
“So Delta has taken over everywhere. That is probably why we are saying that death is going up,” he told Joy news.
Meanwhile, over 11,000 people have been vaccinated with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in the Ashanti region as of Monday, August 16, 2021, according to Health Officials.
The exercise began in the Ashanti region on Friday, August 13, 2021 in areas including Kumasi Metropolitan area, Oforikrom, Kwadaso, and Asokwa Municipalities.
At a press conference, the Ashanti Regional Health Director, Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang said “The vaccination started on Friday 13th in four districts. As of today [Monday, August 16], we have vaccinated about 11,000 people.”
“We are also running the second dose of the Sputnik vaccine, especially for the census enumerators,” he added.