‘Ho has no coronavirus case’

The Ho Teaching Hospital has made it clear that it has not recorded any case of the coronavirus (COVID-19), contrary to growing notion in the municipality.

According to some community members, two Togolese citizens who tested positive to the virus were on admission at the facility.  

As at Monday, word had gone round that the cases were referred from Aflao to the Ho Teaching Hospital the previous day, and that the carriers were at the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.

“But this is totally untrue,” insisted Mr Gideon Boateng, Disease Control Officer of the Ho Teaching Hospital at a Public Health Emergency Committee Meeting in Ho on Tuesday.

Dispelling the story, he explained that there were two suspected cases of the virus at the hospital earlier in the week, however, when the cases were promptly reviewed, “they did not fit the definition of COVID-19.”

Meanwhile, Madam Victoria Kpelly, acting Municipal Director of Health Service has expressed concern over the growing trend in which some local residents use ‘akpeteshie’ mixed with water in place of hand sanitisers to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

She pointed out that there was no scientific proof that the combination was effective for that purpose, adding that “the hand sanitisers have an alcohol content of 70 per cent, and we do not even know the alcohol percentage of akpeteshie which can cause public nuisance with its pungent smell.”

Madam Kpelly said that all the health facilities in the municipality had been mapped to undertake vigorous daily surveillance exercise and screen anyone entering their premises, and “we are seriously training our staff to look for suspected cases all the time.”

In a contribution, Mr Gordon Akurugu, Volta Regional Head of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) said that serious efforts were underway to ensure that fake hand sanitizers did not flood the market in the wake of measures being adopted to contain the spread of the pandemic.

Earlier in the day, the MCE, Mr Prosper Pi-Bansah led the 25-member committee to the border post at Nyive to train personnel of the security agencies there on the various methods of screening travellers crossing the frontier.

He gave the assurance that the assembly would commit the necessary resources and zeal to the exercise at the frontier.

FROM ALBERTO MARIO NORETTI, HO