Six more COVID-19 deaths have been confirmed by the Ghana Health Service (GHS), pushing the country’s death toll to 561.
This comes hours after the country’s health management body had announced that 13 more people have succumbed to the virus, which brought the death toll then to 555 from a previous 542 as of Monday, February 15, 2021.
This brings to a total of 19 deaths recorded within a space of 24 hours. The GHS in its latest update via the COVID-19 designated portal said 86 others were in severe condition while 29 were also in critical condition.
The country’s active cases have surged again to 7,866 after two continuous decline which brought it to 7,778.
The active cases were being managed in treatment sites and isolation centers across the country, while some were under home management, the GHS said.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has attributed the spike in COVID-19 deaths in the country to limited access to healthcare facilities.
The Association also lamented the inadequate number of medical personnel handling critical to severe COVID-19 cases and said it was contributing to the rising deaths.
General Secretary of the Medical Association, Dr Justice Yankson, told the GNA in Accra that, people kept losing their lives because there were no adequate COVID-19 Intensive Care Units (ICUs) with enough functional beds for patients.
“We do not have enough specialised facilities to take care of people with severe coronavirus infections and the increase in deaths simply means more critical to severe cases are being recorded, but they do not receive the needed attention,” he said.
Data on the Ghana Health Service (GHS) website, shows that a total of 85 COVID 19 deaths have been recorded in one week -from Monday February 8th to Monday February 15.
The data also shows that presently, 86 patients are in severe conditions and 29, in critical conditions.
Dr Yankson, said to manage the pandemic effectively, the Government needed to deploy adequate human resource and enough logistics across the country to handle the high severe to critical cases being recorded. “By now, he added we should have a well set up COVID-19 health facility.”
