Over six thousand contacts have been traced and their samples taken for testing for COVID-19, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has told journalists on Friday.

“Critically, we said this fourteen-day period was to allow us to delay or halt potential community spread but most importantly to do enhanced tracing and testing … Now, initially, you’d remember we said there were about a thousand contacts of the first set of cases that needed to be traced and we had some persons on flights who we were also looking at; that first fourteen flights was about two thousand four hundred; if you ramp up the numbers, almost six thousand people within the flight category that we needed to trace and then as was mentioned, in the neighbourhoods where there are positive cases, to do some active surveillance.

“The good news is that as of yesterday [Thursday], they have been able to trace and take samples of six thousand people.

“A little over three hundred contact-tracing teams in Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi are doing this job, that’s how come we’ve been able to hit about six thousand contacts that they have traced and taken samples of.

“I think it’s a very important milestone we must begin t keep an eye on”, Mr Oppong Nkrumah said.

As of Thursday, 2 April 2020, 204 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Ghana, according to the last update from the Ghana Health Service.

It said on its website that since the last situational update, Ghana has confirmed nine additional COVID-19 cases, all from the Greater Accra Region.

“Four (4) of them have no history of travel nor contact with any confirmed case”, the GHS said, adding: another “four (4) have no travel history but are contacts of confirmed cases in Ghana” while “one travelled to Ghana from Benin within the past 14 days”.

The number of deaths, however, remains five (5).

The number of regions reporting cases remain five (5) (Greater Accra, Ashanti, Northern, Upper West and Eastern).

The Greater Accra Region has most of the cases (183) followed by the Northern Region (10), Ashanti Region (9), Upper West Region (1) and Eastern Region (1).

Most of the cases are reported from routine / enhanced surveillance activities.

Cases from travellers under mandatory quarantine remain 89.