The Ashanti Regional Health Director, Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang says the three weeks partial lockdown effected by the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was to ensure that Ghanaians heeded to the social distancing directives to help curb the coronavirus.

According to him, social distancing is the fundamental approach to avoid contracting the pandemic threatening lives across the globe. He added that the lifting of the lockdown in selected parts of Ghana is an important phase for the health directorate in understanding the activities of the coronavirus to enable them fight it.

“Social distancing is the key to fight this virus. The lockdown was effected to make sure that people observe the rules and regulations that has been enforced. Because people were not doing the right thing, that was the reason for the lockdown”, he said.

“So if you think it’s over and you do not observe the social distancing, it becomes even more difficult,” he said.

He explained at a press conference held on Monday, April 20, 2020 at the Regional Health Directorate conference hall, Adum that majority of patients are asymptomatic, i.e. they do not exhibit any symptons at all when infected therefore it has become necessary for the directorate to do a better risk communication to determine the next way forward.

“This is very important phase because we need to understand a lot of things to help us in our fight against COVID-19.,”

“Most of them are asymptomatic and it has become even necessary for us to do the risk communication even better so that people would understand where we are right now,” he said.

The President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo ended Ghana’s partial lockdown directives on Sunday, April 19, 2020 to give Government the opportunity to try to contain the spread of the virus, scale-up effectively the tracing of persons who had come into contact with infected persons, test them for the virus, and quarantine those who tested positive and isolate them for treatment.

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Nana Addo also explained that, with Ghana having received the test results of some 68,591 contacts, and with the majority of tests being undertaken over the last 3 weeks, 1,042 persons, i.e. 1.5%, have been confirmed as positive, with 67,549, i.e. 98.5%, testing negative.

The Ashanti Region as at Monday, April 2020 have recorded 62 cases with three deaths and six recoveries and in his address, Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang cautioned Ghanaians not to take advantage of the president’s decision of ending the lockdown into overlooks.

He seriously urged that persons must observe the social distancing mandate, covering of nose and mouth with masks and adhering to regular washing of hands and applying alcohol based sanitizers.

He called for the need for citizens to treat individuals as potential carriers of COVID-19.

“If going to town is not necessary, avoid it in order to help constrain the virus. Getting infected through needless means will make our work tough

Ghana has so far recorded 1026 COVID-19 cases.