Head of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Ghana Infectious Disease Centre (GIDC), Dr. Chris Owu has said more health workers are contracting Covid-19 in the general hospitals than Covid-19 treatment Centres mainly because those at the treatment Centers are always in their protective gears as compared to those in the general hospitals who have “let their guard down”.
“Covid-19 infection rate among health workers in Covid-19 treatment Centers are far lower than those in non covid-19 Centers and the reason is because we (health workers at Covid-19) treatment centers know the patients we are dealing with and so we are more careful, we wear appropriate PPEs. Unfortunately in a lot of our general hospitals, health workers do not know which patients they are coming into contact with and increasingly they let their guard down so what we have is that the patient may not have victims but that does not mean they don’t have Covid-19 so they end up getting infected because of lack of precaution in non Covid-19 Centers”.
Dr Chris Owu explained that in most of the Covid-19 Centers, there are a lot of infection prevention control measures that are put in place to ensure that health workers are protected.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has earlier disclosed that a total of 3,580 health workers have contracted Covid-19 in the country.