The Ghana Health Service has come back with full force after it cleared majority of information on its website Thursday, April 23, 2020.
The portal was introduced by the Ministry of Information on March 15; just three days after Ghana recorded its first two positive cases, to provide timely and relevant information to the public every six hours.
The page, prior to Thursday, had relevant information including the graphical and geographical breakdown of the cases as recorded in all affected regions. It also had statistics and data regarding which age group and gender is mostly being affected.
As of Thursday afternoon, two days after some controversies about massaged numbers on the website, only the total number of the country’s confirmed cases; 1154 was left the website, with virtually every other information removed.
Ghanaweb’s checks Friday afternoon however reveals that the website has been updated and with a completely new outlook, one more engaging and with clearer details.
The new page can arguably be described as an improved version of the former. Though it takes quite a while to load, it appears with new features.
The page still has its top categories where persons can click to access the main home page, press releases, other releases, FAQs, cancellations and suspensions, about COVID-19 and archives but has relatively different segregation and some additions.
Breakdown and key features
- The total sum of confirmed coronavirus cases can be found at the top left part of the page, with the regional case count (highest to lowest) directly beneath it.
- The number of recoveries and deaths is captured side by side at the top right side of the page.
- It has a map distribution of cases in Ghana with a special zoom in and zoom out feature that allows anyone interact with the map to get the specifics as to which areas are affected and with which particular numbers.
- The page now has a more comprehensive data analysis category that has Graphical representations of the Gender distribution, the number of patients who have a travel history and which have not, with the various countries. It also has another travel history section that has a total sum of all persons with the travel history, and those without.
- It also has a hotspot map that contains the high and less affected areas in Ghana situated within the West African region.
The updated website
The website prior to the updates