New infections of 115 push Ghana’s active COVID-19 cases to 888

115 new cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in Ghana pushing the country’s active case count to 881.

The country’s death toll still stands at 333.

The Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions continue to lead with cumulative high numbers of COVID-19 related cases; 30,061 and 11,169 respectively.

11 persons are in severe conditions with one person in a critical state.

For active cases, the Greater Accra tops with 522 while the International travellers at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) follow with 205.

Ghana has had a total of 54,401 cases and 53,180 discharges.

President Akufo-Addo has already urged Ghanaians to adhere to COVID-19 safety protocols during the Christmas season

In his 20th update on the management of the coronavirus pandemic in Ghana, he urged Ghanaians to “err on the side of caution and observe the COVID-19 safety protocols no matter where we find ourselves.”

Already, the Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe has said testing is ongoing to determine if the new variant of the coronavirus has emerged in the country.

This comes days after Nigeria recorded cases of the virus.

“We have adopted the strategy of testing people before they enter the country. We have made the PCR testing mandatory. We also do the antigen tests. When we get the positives, we pass them on to Noguchi to do the sequencing, they did it two months ago and did not identify any new virus strain. What they are doing now, with the advent of the new virus variant is, they are collecting the samples to see whether there are any in Ghana.”

“However, per what we have gathered so far, there is no evidence of such in the country,” he indicated.

Meanwhile, some top health official outside Ghana have said there was no evidence the new variant was more deadly or would react differently to vaccines, but it was proving to be up to 70 per cent more transmissible.