President's address to the nation - Anthony Julius responds

The President's efforts and commitment to ensuring the Health Security of Our Nation must be commended judging from how he has actively responded to the matters arising and relentlessly urging calm despite the fact that he himself seems to be exhibiting certain traits of health frailties at the moment.

His seemingly pragmatic directives, however, lack the needed efficiency in tracking down contact infections from populations that otherwise would have been easily targeted and tested for the virus.

I expected the President to order a complete and immediate lockdown of the University of Ghana and a quarantine of all present as at March 15 for contact screening and testing for the virus.

A student from the University has the virus and was active on campus for the past 4 days and all the President did was to order the closure of the schools for students to go home?

Wuhan is over 12 Million large but after a few 10s of cases, the City was shut to enable immediate contact screenings and that I believe saved a number of other Provinces from getting infected. If the University of Ghana is 38,00 large and one person has been confirmed to have contracted the virus, just compare the scale for yourself.

If this move isn't corrected, there'll be multiple contact infections at untraceable locations all over the country making tracking down the virus very difficult.

A university population is easier to be made compliant with quarantines since students understand fully, the implications of social contacts in the midst of this epidemic. So dispersing a possibly infected elite population to be out among the larger masses who are likely to be less compliant is a policy blander from my perspective. *In fact, other jurisdictions would have included neighboring UPSA, GIMPA and the others in this lockdown and testing process.*

If the university will shut down, it should be after a well-coordinated screening of all present on campus at the moment. Nonresident students who have been to campus within the last four days must be strongly advised to self-quarantine and if possible the state must attempt tracing all of them.

More tests and targeted isolations are more important to an infected community than shutdown and disperse.

Greetings from the East

Anthony Julius Kwame

Former UGSRC Deputy PRO.

(Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China)