Coronavirus: GMA calls for total nationwide lockdown

The Ghana Medical Association is calling on government to impose a nationwide total lockdown to fully tackle the spread of coronavirus in the country.

“I think the conversation should shift to the point that now we need to be tackling the whole country in general. Whether there are recorded cases or not. I think the whole country would have to come under some degree of restriction. It shouldn’t be limited to Accra and Kumasi. This is what we requested for some weeks ago and people started calling us all sort of names”.

Dr. Frank Serebour, Vice President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) said in an interview with Kwame Adinkrah on ‘Pure Morning Drive’ Tuesday.

Reacting to the current lockdown in the country he said:

‘I don’t call this a lockdown, honestly. What we’re experiencing is restriction. Even this restriction is very lax. This fuse into our earlier call. When we first brought it up, Some wise people said we were not wise enough to request for a lockdown. Kwame, you can tell that as we speak now, all the other regions have recorded cases including my hometown- Bekwai. Therefore, it is important to consider restrictions in the whole country’



Few weeks ago, GMA called on government to lockdown some parts of the country after recording COVID 19 cases, restricting movement as well.

Despite the current restrictions in the country, Dr. Serebour is of the view that President Akufo-Addo opned a window opportunity for persons to flee taking into account the grace period given ‘them in preparation for the lockdown’.

“What really went wrong under the lockdown was that window opportunity people had to flee from their various regions to other regions. And we are compounding that problem with the food sharing exercise. It is better we didn’t have it ”, he said.

The Progressive People’s Party(PPP) and Bearau of Public Safety has also caaled on government to declare a nationwide lockdown to help deal with covid-19.

That, they explain, is because of the way and manner COVID-19 was spreading at breakneck speed, creating a severe public health emergency and its potential negative impact on families and businesses.