Nine more dead from COVID-19 in Ghana; as confirmed cases hit over 70k
- Ghana has seen disturbing increases in the active case count since the beginning of this year
- The country is expected to take delivery of some 17million doses of the vaccines by June
- It has been warned that the world can only return to normal with a wide coverage of the vaccines
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COVID-19 has killed nine more people in Ghana, bringing the country’s death toll to 449.
A total of 791 new COVID-19 cases were also recorded, shooting up the active cases to 6,095, according to the Ghana Health Service (GHS) website.
Source: UGC
Ghana has now recorded 70,046 cases with a total of 63,502 recoveries.
Currently, there are 126 and 46 persons in severe and critical conditions respectively.
A member of WHO's committee for COVID-19, Prof Helen Rees, warned that the world will only return to normal times well into 2022.
According to the South African, who is one of the world’s leading scientists, normalcy would likely return after high coverage of the vaccines.
"I think this new normal we all talk about is with us for a very long time,” Rees told the BBC.
A herbal medicine, Cryptolepis sanguinolenta, was approved for a clinical trial in Ghana for the treatment of COVID-19.
Known locally as ‘Nibima’, Cryptolepis sanguinolenta's approval for the trial was announced on Monday, February 1, 2021, by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).
The herbal medicine developed by the School of Public Health at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) was submitted to the FDA for the clinical trial in September 2020 and approval was granted in January 2021.
Meanwhile, Ghana is set to receive the first batch of over 17 million vaccines the country is expecting in March 2021.
The country has been earmarked as one of the 145 counties of the UN-led COVAX Facility to take delivery of 2.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which is licensed to the Serum Institute of India (AZ/SII).
The delivery is estimated to begin before the end of February.
The vaccine is expected to be administered to persons in key sectors such as health workers in the first quarter.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
