Presidential advisor on Health and former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare has disclosed that over 1,200 persons are currently under 14-day mandatory quarantine in Ghana between Sunday dawn and Monday.
After the 14-day mandatory quarantine, the quarantined individuals would be required to stay at the recommended hotels for another 14 days after which another test can be run before they can be discharged to their various residence, Dr Nsiah Asare added.
According to him, even though these measures will cause a drain on the Government’s finances, they have become necessary to save Ghanaians from the COVID-19 transmission.
“So far we have about 1200 people who are under quarantine in the country. From the two nights, the President made the announcement. When we spoke to the Ghana Airports Company and Immigration Service, there were about 7,000 people who came into the country on a daily basis. But when we started the travel restrictions, it reduced drastically.
“On Sunday, after the President’s address on Saturday all those who came into the country, whether you are Nigerian, whatever aircraft you are coming with, you are going through mandatory quarantine. It’s a very difficult thing to do but we have to save the country. President said we should go ahead and the President will bear the cost. We want to save everybody in this country,” he said.
When President spoke on Saturday, he said anyone who came before the border closure will go through mandatory quarantine which the state is bearing the cost so we got hotels for all of them. After that we test them, after testing, they will still live there for about 2 weeks and then we test you again before you can go home.”
Many Ghanaians have criticized the move by the Akufo-Addo government to quarantine persons in hotels as it is a drain on taxpayers money but responding to this, Dr Nsiah Asare said quarantining people involves creating a comfortable environment for individuals and prevent the cross-infection of the virus.
“Even in the hotels which are under constant monitoring by the police, people under quarantine want to run away. When someone is undergoing self-quarantine, you don’t have to create room for self infection. If you remember the diamond princess ship, some persons who were negative later came to test positive because they were left to stay together. Through that, infections can spread through surfaces like tables so if you have take them to University campuses like is being suggested, it will create a problem,
“Again, quarantine is not hospital care, during quarantine, the person is not necessarily ill, you are just advising the person to stay somewhere for monitoring so the best place, in my opinion, is what we have done, in a secluded place. I know one person whose child is under self-quarantine and she is very happy because she is comfortable so the quarantine is to make the person also very comfortable. You can’t ask someone under quarantine to sleep on a double-decker,” he added
He explained that the people under quarantine will be educated after they are discharged to prevent them from contracting the disease.
“After the quarantine, we ask them to take care of themselves because the fact they’ve tested negative doesn’t mean they may not have the virus within in the next few days. Some high profile persons who are also under quarantine feel this is okay because they think we should have done this even earlier but as usual, some of the foreigners were demanding their rights when we suggested they stay in hotels,” he added.
