One hundred and twenty COVID-19 patients have recovered, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said.

This means the patients have tested negative for COVID-19 after two tests.

Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases has shot up to 1,154.

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Aboagye, told journalists at a press briefing on Wednesday, 22 April 2020: “Under the general surveillance, we have 401 cases that have reported positive”, adding: “We still have the 115 travellers quarantined and tested positive and enhanced contact-tracing in the last three weeks, we have 638 positives, bringing the number 1,154 cases as of today".

“Out of this, we have had about 120 recovered, it changed from the 99 in the last reporting,” he added.

President Nana Akufo-Addo, on Sunday, lifted restrictions on movement in Accra, Kumasi, Tema and Kasoa saying the health authorities now had a better tracking of the disease.

The 112 newly confirmed cases are the first batch of cases to be announced following the lifting of the three-week lockdown.

President Akufo-Addo said in his Sunday address to the nation that a backlog of some 18,000 COVID-19 samples are being cleared by the health authorities out of over 80,000 contacts traced and tested, so far.

The President said: “Fellow Ghanaians, since the first two (2) cases of infections were recorded on our shores, we have, till date, traced some eighty-six thousand (86,000) contacts, out of which we have test results of sixty-eight thousand, five hundred and ninety-one (68,591) contacts.

“There is, thus, a backlog of some eighteen thousand (18,000) tests whose results are yet to be received”.

“The overwhelming majority of these contacts”, he noted, “have been established in the last three weeks of the partial lockdown in Accra and Kumasi”, adding: “Out of this number, one thousand and forty-two (1,042) persons, i.e. 1.5%, have been confirmed as positive, with sixty-seven thousand, five hundred and forty-nine (67,549), i.e. 98.5%, testing negative; ninety-nine (99) persons have recovered and have been discharged; and nine hundred and thirty (930) persons, who have been isolated, are responding to treatment either in their homes or in treatment facilities”.

“These nine hundred and thirty (930) persons, after their treatment, will soon undergo the mandatory two (2) tests to determine if they have also recovered from the virus or otherwise”, he noted.  

The President explained: “The main reason our country has seen an increase in the number of confirmed cases over the last three (3) weeks is because of the decision we took aggressively to trace and test contacts of infected persons. This has enabled us to identify and isolate infected persons, protect the population from further infections, and contain better the spread of the virus. Indeed, Ghana is the only other country in Africa to have conducted more than sixty thousand tests, and we are ranked number one (1) in Africa in administering of tests per million people”.  

The decision to impose restrictions on movement, he added, was backed by the data at hand, “and our next course of action, again, is backed by data and by science. Indeed, all that government is doing is intended to achieve five (5) key objectives – limit and stop the importation of the virus; contain its spread; provide adequate care for the sick; limit the impact of the virus on social and economic life; and inspire the expansion of our domestic capability and deepen our self-reliance”.