Coronavirus: 15,000 Ghanaians may die from the virus– Presidential advisor
Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare has disclosed that based on a model generated for coronavirus infections in Ghana, about 15,000 Ghanaians may be killed by the virus.
Dr Nsiah-Asare said the projection was based on a baseline projection that 10% of Ghanaians will contract the disease before it hits its peak.
The former director of the Ghana Health service said this on Accra based Joy FM. He said majority of the 10% who get the infection may not show symptoms of the illness.
“We expect that about 10% of the population may be infected and out of the 10% of the population 80% may not show signs or symptoms at all and 5% of them will be very ill, that is the projection,” he said.
Out of this 5% of persons projected to be critically ill, 10% may die, the Presidential Advisor said.
With these projections, if Ghana’s population is pegged at 30 million, it implies some three million Ghanaians may get infected for the Covid-19.
Also, 5% of the projected three million infections falling seriously sick suggests that at least 150, 000 will fall within this category.
Out the 150,000 people whose infection will be serious, 10% of will be fatal; which means 15,000 deaths would have been recorded before Ghana gets out of the woods.
Dr Nsiah-Asare, however, said this modelling may not apply strictly to Ghana because of the observed dynamics of infected cases across the country.
“If you look at the cases that we are seeing, the cases that are getting critical are very, very small…it means, we have a situation where this hypothesis may be the case in Ghana,”
As at Sunday April 19, Ghana had recorded 1042 confirmed cases of the virus with 99 recoveries and 9 deaths.
President Akufo-Addo has attributed the spike in confirmed cases to an aggressive enhanced contact tracing and testing across the country by health officials.
