The supervisor of the Takoradi Veterinary Laboratory, Dr. Simon Gbene has revealed that the Western Region is currently recording 40 to 45 positive cases daily out of 150 to 200 samples they test a day.

According to Dr. Simon Gbene, 90 percent of the positive samples are the United Kingdom’s new variant.

Dr. Simon Gbene believes that the Western Region is recording a higher number because the UK variant is 70 percent heavily infectious and deadlier than the original.

Dr. Simon Gbene believes that the presence of the new variant could be due to the high number of foreigners in the Western Region due to the oil and gas industry in the region

Speaking to Citinews, Dr. Simon Gbene said “currently our daily testing is around 150 to 200 samples and we are recording positives; 40 to 45 positives daily. It can go up depending on the number of samples we get. If we talk about the new variant, we actually cannot test for it, however, we are working together with Noguchi.”

“They have the capacity to do the genome-sequencing. So they came for some positive samples from our lab [Takoradi Veterinary Lab], and from their test results, we are getting about 90% of the samples they took being the B117 which is the United Kingdom’s variant and that actually explains the ramping up of the numbers we are getting currently.”

“This new variant is heavily infectious, thus about 70% more than the old version and also deadlier than the old version. So that is the situation we are currently faced with and that’s why you could see that the Western Region numbers are going up. There is one unique thing that is causing this because there are a lot of foreign companies here due to the oil and gas industry in the Western Region,” he said.

Ghana's COVID-19 death toll has risen to 457 following the confirmation of eight more deaths by the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the country's health management body on Sunday.

Additionally, the country has recorded 722 new infections, raising its active cases to 6,352 from a previous 6,095 since the last update on Saturday, February 6, 2021.

The new infections are from tests conducted as of February 03, 2021.

The latest update further disclosed that 457 more people have recovered, bringing the total of clinical recoveries and discharge to 63,959.