Govt delays in updating Coronavirus figures creating mistrust – CDD

A research fellow with the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) has bemoaned government’s delay in updating Ghanaians with current figures of COVID-19 in the country.

According to Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, the practice has the tendency to increase public mistrust and suspicion for government.

“Since Kumasi had their press conference today, we are going clear 4,5, 6 hours of delays, What is preventing them from telling us what the current data in Accra, Tamale and other places are. When you do things like that you subject the entire data to mistrust and that does not urger well for society in times like these,” he told Starr News Tuesday.

It comes hours after the Health directorate in the Ashanti region updated its numbers of COVID-19 cases in the region. The Eastern region has also updated its numbers since Monday. Both updates have not been captured in the national figures on the website of the Ghana Health Service. No explanation has been offered for the delay.

According to government, Ghana has recorded a total of 1042 confirmed cases of coronavirus after testing a total of 68,591 samples as of April 19, 2020.

Total samples tested so far now stands at 68,591 with 1.52 % testing positive. The results of these backlog of samples when released does not mean the number of new cases recorded on the day of the report. Regions that have reported cases remain the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Eastern, Northern, Volta, Upper East, Upper West, Central, Western and North East regions.