'Runaway' Guinean coronavirus patient still at large - Oppong Nkrumah

There is no confirmation from the police yet that a young Guinean COVID-19 patient who fled a quarantine centre in Tamale, Northern Region, has been found, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has been reported as saying by ABC news.

Outgoing Deputy Health Minister, Mr Alexander Kom Abban, had said in an earlier interview that the young lady had been arrested in Accra.

“I’m just wondering how this person got to Accra because she was actually spotted and arrested. That is the shocking bit. How did she cross Kumasi? The person has been arrested. Yesterday when I was in Korle-Bu I chanced on that information,” Mr Kom Abban was quoted by Accra-based Citi FM.

However, Mr Oppong Nkrumah is quoted by ABC news saying: “There have been some reports that this escaped Guinean girl has been found and arrested”.

“One of the reports mentions one of the towns in the North, another report also suggests that this Guinean girl was found and arrested in Accra. I have been checking with the police and security agencies, we do not have any confirmation of that”, he clarified.

“What we do know is that earlier, somebody was arrested in the northern part of this country on the suspicion that it was her in the photographs, etc., it turned out it wasn’t her. The report in Accra also follows a similar pattern but as I speak to you now, I do not have any confirmation from the joint police command or the police that this woman has been arrested and they are still on the lookout for her,” the Ofoase Ayirebi lawmaker said.

The fugitive patient was among ten Guinean and Burkinabe aliens who were arrested in northern Ghana after the country’s borders were closed to human traffic as part of measures to mitigate the spread of the virus.