Accra, March 19, GNA – Ghana’s has recorded another two confirmed patients of COVID-19 on Thursday March 19, raising the total case count to 11.
Information provided on the Ghana Health Service’s (GHS) dedicated website to update the nation on the pandemic said both cases were recorded in the Ashanti Regional capital of Kumasi.
It received the notification from the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) and shared the information at 1500 hours.
The GHS said the first was a 59-year old Ghanaian woman resident in the United Kingdom, who recently returned to Ghana, and was currently living in Kumasi.
She reported to a private hospital with the history of fever, general malaise, cough and a running nose and her condition was suspected to be an infection of COVID-19.
Subsequently, a sample was collected and sent to the KCCR and the report received early this morning proved positive.
The second, it explained, involved a 61-year old Lebanese male trader, resident in Kumasi.
He felt unwell and reported to a health facility also with fever and a cough and the sample taken from him also tested positive.
The GHS said both patients were being managed in isolation and were responding to treatment.
It said, so far the confirmed cases in Ghana had come from Turkey, Norway, Germany, France, the United States of America, United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
Regarding contact tracing, it said, a total of 399 contacts had been identified and were being followed up.
Nineteen of these, it said, had developed some forms of symptoms and thus samples were taken for laboratory testing.
Fifteen of them have proved negative and the GHS is awaiting the results of remaining four.
Meanwhile, the contact identification and tracking for the newly confirmed cases had just started, it said.
Ghana recorded its first two cases on Thursday, March 12, and has since escalated its precautionary and protocol regimes to contain the disease.
They include a ban on social and religious gatherings for four weeks, a travel advisory that discourages arrivals from countries with 200 and more confirmed cases and the indefinite closure of all schools.
