Coronavirus: We have peaked and so what? - Kwesi Pratt fires GHS Boss

Seasoned journalist, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. has slammed the Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service, Dr Badu Sarkodie over his claims that Ghana is at its peak of the coronavirus crisis.

“So to answer directly to the question, we are at the peak of the curve,” Dr Badu Sarkodie, during a press briefing in Accra on Tuesday, May 5, 2020, said in response to a question on where Ghana lies on the pandemic curve.

Kwesi Pratt, who was utterly alarmed by the GHS Director's statement, questioned the basis for the claims and also wondered what really caused him to jump into such a conclusion.

''Our leader who told us that the case is at its peak, what was he trying to achieve? He knows the statistics but the moment he came to tell us that we have peaked, what did he really mean? We have peaked and so what should we do?'' he quizzed.

Mr Pratt further expressed worry over the spate of COVID-19 cases in Ghana which currently stands at 5,638 with 1,460 recoveries and 28 deaths and called on the government to stop praising themselves and concentrate on finding ways to successfully fight the pandemic.

''We should find a way to stop the spread of the disease. We should adopt measures to ensure the disease doesn't claim lives. Let's find a way to curb the disease so that businesses in Ghana will not cripple. Let's find a way to curtail the disease for us to lead normal lives," he told host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo'.

Meanwhile, in a related development, the World Health Organization (WHO) says it will probe Ghana’s COVID-19 data to prove whether the country has peaked or not.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, is quoted to have said ''we would need to look with the Ghanaian authorities and their data and see the conditions, the trends, the basis on which they say they have peaked…What I do know is Ghana is one of the countries that have very significantly expanded testing.”

“So they have gone out there looking for cases. Some of the increase in numbers that we are seeing in Ghana may be related to the fact that the case definition has changed slightly. In the beginning, they were probably testing people who presented ill at a health facility.

“We will look with the Ghanaian government. We know that they put in place strong measures for prevention and they are also testing very aggressively which we think is a good combination," the WHO Regional Director for Africa said in an interview.