Gov't deserves a pat on the back for better handling of coronavirus situation - Dr. Okoe Boye

Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, has commended the Government of Ghana for doing a good job in controlling the COVID-19 situation.

Dr. Okoe Boye asserted that despite the increasing cases of the pandemic disease, the country's infection and mortality rates remain one of the lowest in Africa and the world at large.

According to Dr. Okoe Boye, but for the interventions of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the country might have seen a higher case count than what it has currently recorded.

Speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, he held that the government deserves a pat on the back for putting measures in place to safeguard the lives of Ghanaians and also ensuring there are no widespread infections of the virus.

"If you want to judge a country by the number of cases to say the management of the situation has failed, then the whole world has failed. So, you don't make the mistake of looking at absolute numbers and judge a country to be a failure because it has recorded 5,000. What you must look at is what would have happened if the measures were not put in place?"

". . Of the 4,832 active cases, if 2,000 of them become negative in three weeks, do you know what it means? It means this figure once upon a time was only a statistical record. In three weeks, two thousand people from this number who were once upon time positive today might become negative. Now, what it means is that the figure we're having today is transient," he stated.

He also expressed his disagreement with people who think the President shouldn't have lifted the lockdown because of the increment in the case count.

Highlighting the main reasons for a lockdown in a pandemic as the novel Coronavirus, he said; "it was to buy time and have enough knowledge about the virus but at a particular threshold, you start going back to life knowing that the risk is still around, but you reduce the risk with steps and guidelines''.