President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been criticized by the Ranking Member on Health Committee of Parliament, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh over the strategy used to lockdown some parts of the country considered as the epicentres of the spread of the COVID-19.
According to him, containing the spread of the virus in the communities is one of the reasons for the President to lockdown some parts of the country.
Speaking on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the former Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in the erstwhile Mahama administration intimated that the lockdown was needed to either stop people in the restricted areas from moving to the unrestricted and or people from unrestricted areas to the restricted, but the Akufo-Addo government failed to achieve that feat.
He explained that the President's directive to lockdown some parts of the country from March 30, 2020 could have been effective if he had initially lockdown the entire nation to restrict movement before limiting it to the affected areas three days later.
He added that the President’s strategy to lockdown only the affected areas paved way for massive movement in town as it gave a two-day grace period for those in the affected areas to move to unaffected areas, making the spread of the virus possible.
“In our case, the partial lockdown could not achieve the containment of the spread of the virus 100 percent . . . what we should have done was that before the partial lockdown had begun in the specified areas in the country, the President should have lockdown the entire country to halt movement around and avoid the spread of the virus and then 3 days later come out to lift the ban on those areas which are not affected by the virus, and by that time, there cannot be any movement,” he suggested.
He indicated that if the President had done that from the beginning, the country could have achieved 95 percent of the restriction of movement around; thus, there will be no fear of possible transfer of the virus to unsuspecting communities.
Touching on mass testing, the Juaboso lawmaker insisted that the government should go beyond the enhanced contract tracing to test all people in the affected areas as those around the infected persons are possible candidates of the COVID-19.
Relying on research, Hon. Mintah Akandoh said that there are others who may not show symptoms of the virus but are carriers; hence, the need to go beyond the contact tracing to engage people in the epicentres and run test on them to avoid spread of the virus.
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