The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Thursday received two sets of video conferencing equipment from Huawei Technologies Ghana Limited, a Chinese technological company, valued at 500,000 Ghana cedis.

Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, the Minister of Health, who received the equipment, commended Huawei Ghana and other Chinese companies for their support and praised China for the progress in controlling the epidemic in its jurisdiction.

He said the rationale behind the present partial lockdown in some parts of the country was to ensure an effective contact tracing strategy to curb the spread of the virus.

Mr Agyemang-Manu said although the exercise may bring discomfort to the people, they must bear with the authorities and cooperate with the contact tracing teams to ensure success.

He said it was believed that the country may not have the cause to review the two-week lockdown, should the results continue to show impressive outcomes, while active contact tracing continued.

The Health Minister spoke highly of Ghana-China cooperation and urged the Chinese Government to shed light on its valuable experiences of the pandemic with Ghana.

He said Ghana would continue to work with the world community to fight against the pandemic.

Mr Zhou Wei, the Managing Director of Huawei Technologies Ghana Limited, said the company deemed it a social responsibility to support efforts by Ghana towards the fight against the COVID-19.

He said the equipment would aid communication between the Ministry and health facilities across the country.

Mr Shi Ting Wang, the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, who facilitated the presentation, said the main beneficiary institutions would be the Ministry and the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, due to their key roles in these critical times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the equipment would not only help reduce physical contacts between the Ministry and its local hospitals, but also help in connecting the Ghanaian authorities and other medical workers with their counterparts in China and other parts of the world.

The Ambassador said though hard-hit itself, China would do its utmost best to help Ghana fight against the spread of the COVID-19.

He spoke highly of Ghana’s efforts to flatten the pandemic and commended Huawei Ghana for its strong sense of social responsibility.

He said medical supplies officially donated by the Chinese Government to Ghana would arrive shortly via a chattered flight, and that a number of Chinese companies and businesses in Ghana had been donating medical supplies to support the fight against the infection.

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, he said, was also mobilising additional resources to make a donation to the country to support government’s efforts.

He emphasised that although the novel coronavirus first broke out in China, it did not mean that its origin was from the country, saying, “China, like other countries, also suffered a lot of the virus”.

Mr Shi explained that under the strong leadership of President Xi Jinping, the whole of China had since been fighting an all-out people’s war against the pandemic.

So far, in the nation of 1.4 billion population, the number of new confirmed home-grown cases had become nearly zero, he said.

He said the virus had no respect for borders or friendship, and that it was the firm belief that as long as nations stayed in solidarity with each other, the battle against the pandemic would definitely be won sooner than later.