•This will be his 26th national address on the subject since Ghana recorded its first two case of the virus in March 2020
•The SARS-Cov-2 Delta variant of the virus has been rapidly claiming lives
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will tonight at 8:00pm address the nation on the COVID-19 pandemic and measures to curtail its spread.
Since the president's last address in May this year, a new strain of the virus, SARS-Cov-2 Delta variant, has been claiming lives and increased the country’s caseload.
This will be his 26th national address on the subject since Ghana recorded its first two cases back in March 2020.
Though Ghana has commenced a vaccination programme, the country has been lagging with the availability of enough vaccines to inoculate citizens.
According to the Ghana Health Service, the country has so far vaccinated just over one million persons out of a 30 million population; a number which is relatively low
Some suggestions for tonight's address are that, the president will tighten or introduce some COVID-19 restrictions of which many citizens have been flouting, since his last address back in May.
As of July 21, 2021, Ghana's case active case count is 4,094 with a death toll of 821. The total number of cases for the country since the virus was first detected is 101,170.
Meanwhile, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) has observed, “with concern,” some characteristics of the new Delta variant of SARS-Cov-2 detected at the institute’s testing centre since April 2021.
In a statement issued on Saturday, 24 July 2021, the Institute said the “positive cases have very high viral loads indicated by low cut-off thresholds (CT values) obtained in the real-time RT-PCR assay.”
The CT values for the majority are between 15 and 20 compared to higher values above 30, seen previously, the Institute noted.
It said has also observed that “the positive individuals are taking longer to clear the virus,” explaining: “This is evident in the number of retests that still test positive.”
This will be president Akufo-Addo's latest address since May this year