General News of Thursday, 6 February 2020

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

Ghana's high temperatures won't support Coronavirus - Korle Bu CEO

CEO of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Daniel Asare play videoCEO of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Daniel Asare

CEO of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Daniel Asare, has confirmed that investigations into the two suspected cases of coronavirus recorded at the hospital have proved negative

Dr Daniel Asare said the two patients - a Chinese national and Argentine - have so far been discharged to the appropriate medical practitioners for further treatment.

"...They realized that these people may have this condition and they were referred from outside Korle-Bu. So what they did was to ask them to stay a little bit, take their blood samples to Noguchi Memorial Institute that's the only place confirmation can be done," Dr Daniel Asare said.

"Once we were waiting for the confirmation we were in tune with them telling them to keep calm...and we got the confirmation and the preliminary confirmation was negative. And the next one which was the actual confirmation showed that they were negative. SO these two suspected cases proved negative." Dr Asare affirmed while speaking in an interaction with the media Thursday, February 6, 2020.

"They're going home...today. If you keep somebody in quarantine and you make the diagnosis that they haven't got coronavirus, any other disease that he has, you send him to the appropriate medical team for treatment, Dr Asare added.

He also allayed fears of a possible outbreak of the virus citing the tropical climate of the country as a reason.

“Ghana is safe, tourists are safe, Korle Bu is safe and ready for a possible outbreak and we’re working to keep it so. We’re very lucky as a country because of our high temperatures it will be very difficult for the virus to spread,” he added.