Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has admonished the public to stop kissing as a means to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country.
The Nadowli-Kaleo MP argued that as part of entreating people to avoid all forms of contact by practicing physical distancing, health authorities must make it a point to educate people to stop kissing.
He made this call while speaking on the floor of the House on Tuesday, May 19 and urged the Health Minister and other stakeholders leading the country’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic to expand the country’s health and safety protocols to include his suggestion.
The public has been advised to wear nose masks, cover their nose when coughing or sneezing, keep a distance of about 2meters from the nearest person, use sanitisers and wash hands often and stay home as much as possible to ensure the virus isn’t spread to a wider population.
But Alban Bagbin is of the opinion, “Mr Speaker another area we haven’t added, we only talk about droplets from talking like I’m doing or coughing or sneezing, but what about kissing?
“The word is not social distancing now, it is physical distancing. In our society, we don’t have these social classes.
“We need to add such things. It is not just the closeness, it is not just the sneezing, it is not just the coughing but even kissing transmits the disease,” he stated.
Commenting on the issue of public disregarding the recommended health and safety protocols, the Second Deputy Speaker advocated for videos of dead bodies and experiences of other countries who were overwhelmed by the pandemic to be displayed on Television.
He said this will send shockwaves down the spine of those who disregard the protocols and downplay the weight of the issue at hand.
“The important thing is that the people we are leading, they want to see. In fact, I want to see on Television some evidence of death because when you state that this number of people are dead but they are not seeing anything like that [it will not give them the shock of their life]. I believe in shock therapy. We need shock therapy to wake them up from slumber and make them know COVID-19 is real,” he remarked in Parliament.
Ghana currently has 6, 096 confirmed cases with 31 deaths whiles 1773 have recovered.
The Greater Accra leads the country’s case count with over 3, 000 cases while Obuasi accounts for over 70% of the cases in the Ashanti Region making it a hotpot.
