Decentralise, localise future COVID-19 lockdowns — Security analyst suggests to govt

Colonel (rtd) Festus Aboagye, a security analyst, has observed that the government’s earlier partial lockdown of Greater Accra, Kumasi and Kasoa should have been done “boldly and very decisively nationwide”.

However, he suggested that “if a lockdown is to happen again, it should be decentralised, localised, boldly and very decisively nationwide”.

Col (rtd) Aboagye’s sentiments come on the back of the increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country, with the tally standing at 2,719 as of Monday, according to the Ghana Health Service website.

 “The only strategy that we are left with now is to decentralise and localise the lockdown, let’s say that Pokuase or Kwabenya is an epicentre, it will be easier now to isolate Pokuase or such other localities and put them under lockdown and do the mass testing and all the necessary steps and that should be easier.

“That probably has to be the way that we need to go but I don’t think it’s going to be too practicable to lock down the entire nation,” Colonel (rtd) Aboagye added.

Analysing the impact of the earlier lockdown in controlling the spread of the virus, the security analyst stressed that “if we had locked down very boldly and decisively nationwide for let’s say 21 consecutive days, the impact would have been greater than locking down partially in terms of geography and then incrementally from 14 days and then another seven days.

“You can realise that there are a lot of people now who are against lockdown, not because the lockdown is bad but because we failed to plan, we failed to recognise that if you lock down you impose hardships and it was obligatory on the part of the state to relieve those hardships,” Col (rtd) Aboagye intimated. -starrfmonline.com