A Lockdown Will Hurt Ghana – KOD

Kofi Okyere Darko (KOD) has added his voice to calls on whether Ghana should join other countries to lock down in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

In an interview with News One on Wednesday, he disclosed that a possible lockdown “is imminent but majority of Ghanaians who are the ‘poor’ will be the ones to suffer the more.”

On Wednesday, March 25, 2020, Ghana recorded 68 confirmed cases of the virus after the previous day’s figure of 53.

This further heightened discussions on whether or not to lock down the country to restrict movement of citizens ‒ with the aim to curb the spread of the virus.

Suggestions that locking down later would be too late have always been opposed with other views that Ghana does not have the capacity to lock down.

“We live in a very free society but then again to control the spate of coronavirus, that is possibly the only option. We can’t think about a possible lockdown and not consider things like how those who live from hand to mouth would survive, where we are putting the homeless on our streets, some pharmacies and markets will definitely shut down entirely, fuelling stations will not operate (and our fuel stations are not self-service),” he added.

“The only people who will have a comfortable life in such a time are the rich in our communities. It will hurt even though it’s necessary to reduce the spread,” KOD concluded.