President Nana Akufo-Addo has said contrary to earlier fears, the COVID-19 situation in Ghana is “milder” and not killing people in the hundreds and thousands, as earlier feared.

In his latest COVID-19 update on Sunday, 31 May 2020, the President said: “As of today, Sunday, 31 May 2020, we’ve conducted 218, 425 tests. The number of positive cases stands at 8,070 [while] 2,947 persons have recovered. Thirty-six have, sadly, died. Thirteen persons are severely ill with three critically ill for which one is on a ventilator. And 5,087 are responding to treatment at home, isolation centres and hospitals”.

Ghana’s hospitalisation and death rates, according to the President, “have been persistently very low” – “some of the lowest in Africa and in the world”, observing: “The Ghanaian people are not dying in the hundreds and thousands that were earlier anticipated and that are being seen on a daily basis in some other countries”.

“Indeed”, the President noted, “we’re witnessing a much milder manifestation of the virus in the country than was initially feared”.

“And I daresay that it is by the grace of God and the measures taken by the government that have produced these results – our ability to trace, test and treat persons with the virus, has improved considerably”, he noted.

“We now have a large army of efficient contract-tracers, we’ve expanded the number of testing facilities from two to ten across the country and we have increased appreciably, the number of quarantine and isolation centres”.

Also, the President said: “We’ve lessened our dependent on imports and scaled up significantly, domestic production and distribution of PPE to our health workers”.