He said the medical fraternity needs to instill confidence in the public by relaying news about the true state and nature of the deadly pandemic and even among the health and frontline workers themselves, they need to believe what the health experts tell them about the Covid -19 virus.
Dr Yorke stated that if the health authorities are going to keep churning out conflicting messages in the media, then it is going to engender distrust among the general public towards the health authorities and what they tell about the deadly pandemic in the country.
He admonished the health authorities in the country to correct mistakes made in the past such as announcing that the new Delta strain was detected in the country only last month when in fact they have known about it in enclaves like Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region since December last year.
Dr Yorke entreated the health authorities in the country to go back to the basics when it comes to the coronavirus and inform the general public what the actual situation is on the deadly pandemic in the country.
He said when they look at the trajectory of the virus, the increasing number of infections, the positivity rate and the increase in admissions that they are witnessing, he can safely say that we are already on the brink of a third wave of the pandemic in the country.
Dr Yorke made this revelation in an interview with Komla Adom on Midday Live on TV3 Monday, July 19.
He was commenting on the backdrop of the spike in active cases in the country in recent times, especially the detection of the new Delta variant in Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region and the revelation that the new variant has been in this country as far back as December 2020, according to the health professionals.
“I am surprised that the intensive public education in the observance of the protocols is not really being hammered and it beats my imagination. We saw what happened in December, January, February and we don’t want that to happen again so please, I call on the authorities to go down, drill down and continue educating people and enforce the protocols, the social distancing regimes and the funerals and weddings that goes on unabated. And at the individual levels, please Ghanaians, let’s take our destiny into our own hands and do what is right, mask up, wash your hands and maintain the necessary social distance,” he said.
On the question of the new presentation of patients with the virus to health officials in the country different from what is known in the country, the chair of the Greater Accra GMA said, “it’s not too different though but it’s not everybody who has Covid will present both flu-like and the cough, no. I saw one last week, she sat in my consulting room with just a headache and she said suddenly I’m well. Somebody had come home and we tested her using an antigen test which was negative and we asked her to do a PCR test in a recognized laboratory and it came out positive. So yes, it may not be your typical presentation but hey, the prevention methods are the same, it doesn’t change and I think that we should go back to basics to stem the tide”.
On the question of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly(KMA) in a statement confirming that Kumasi have recorded some of the new Delta variant as far back as December 2020 and other parts of the country, contrary to reports by the health authorities that the new Delta variant was only discovered in the country last month, he answered that “I hope that going forward that does not happen because we need to instill confidence in the public and even among the health fraternity, we need to believe what the authorities tell us.
“So if they are going to give us conflicting messages then it leaves doubts as to the information, going forward. So I hope the mistakes that we committed will be corrected going forward and let’s come with clean hands and inform the public what the actual situation is, let’s go back to basics, I dare say again.”
By Barima Kwabena Yeboah|3news.com|Ghana
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