Around this time a year ago, Ghana wasn’t quite aware of what it felt like to have a recorded case of the coronavirus in the country.
Of course, days before this announcement, fear was gradually building up in people who were keenly following the news of what the virus was doing around China and other parts of the world.
The government had also set aside a whopping $100 million to improve Ghana’s readiness and response strategy, as announced by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
And like the deadly Ebola virus, while some of Ghana’s neighboring countries in West Africa recorded cases, not a single case was either imported into our borders or, recorded here and hopes were high.
This kind of also created the impression in the minds of people that we were too immune to such devastating viruses but that was not to be.
By tomorrow a year ago, our first two cases will be reported; a piece of news that will unsettle many in the country, and for even more people, send them into disbelief as few others chased after all available information on what exactly this whole COVID-19 or coronavirus was, authentic or not.
GhanaWeb reported the news as, “Ghana has confirmed two cases of COVID-19 on March 12, 2020, being the first cases to be reported in the country.”
A year on, Ghana’s cases have seen exponential increases with today’s case count at 86,737 and a total of 656 deaths, as is reported on the Ghana Health Service website.
One other thing that is significantly different this year is that the country has received the first batch of vaccines for the coronavirus, with a handful of the populace already vaccinated with the first shots of the AstraZeneca vaccines it received from the COVAX facility in India.
A year on, can Ghana say it has dealt well with the pandemic?
