The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Ghana’s second-largest health referral facility, has completed the setting up of a COVID-19 (Coronavirus) disease testing laboratory.

This follows over three weeks of preparation with all the necessary physical infrastructure, equipment and consumables, as well as good test runs validated by the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research (KCCR).

The development is expected to help facilitate and achieve same-day delivery of COVID-19 test results of cases presented at the Hospital, and those to be received from other facilities.

“I am happy to announce that Management has facilitated the Laboratory Services Directorate to complete the setting up of a special laboratory for resilient management against the pandemic,” Dr. Oheneba Owusu Danso, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Hospital, disclosed.

This was on the sidelines of a ground-breaking ceremony in Kumasi, to reactivate works on the Hospital’s 44-year-old abandoned maternity and children’s block.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, were on hand to grace the occasion.

The Ghana News Agency (GNA) gathered that full operations of the special laboratory would start on Monday, May 18, this year.

Dr. Danso said the laboratory had come at the appropriate time as it would ease some workload on the KCCR, the only scientific facility in the northern sector of the country, hitherto, mandated to carry out test on and validate suspected COVID-19 cases.

As at Saturday, May 16, Ghana had recorded 5,638 confirmed cases, with 1,460 recoveries and 28 deaths, according to the latest report posted on the Ghana Health Service’s COVID-19 portal.

The count of cases per Region put the Greater Accra on top with 4,248 confirmed cases, Ashanti Region recording 798 cases, and Central and Eastern Regions recording 210 and 99 cases, respectively.