The Director for the Health Services at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Badu Sarkodie says the death toll regarding the COVID-19 has some underpinning health threatening issues. He gave the explaination during a media briefing at the Ministry of Information in Accra.
Ghana’s Covid-19 death toll stands at 22 with over 5,127 cases recorded.
Dr Badu Sarkodie said the casualties have other severe health conditions known as comorbidity which are more fatal than the Covid-19 disease.
He noted that persons with confirmed cases of Covid-19 with comorbidity makes their case more precarious than those with just the corona virus infection.
He noted that persons with confirmed cases of Covid-19 with comorbidity makes their case more precarious than those with just the corona virus infection.
He explained that the two are related, we cannot exclusively claim Covid-19 as the cause of deaths due to the comorbidity factor hence the use of terms such as Covid-19 related deaths.
In spite of that, he also touched on the age distribution of both males and females contracting the disease and gave the rationale behind it. According to him, the ages for the dead ranges from 9 to 82 years with 55.5 years as the mean age and a median of 58.1 years.
He noted that the mean for males is 52.4 compared to 58.1 for females. In terms of ratio of males to females, he described it as 2.14 : 1.00 with males having a higher number of deaths in all ages with the exception of the 25 to 34 age group where the death rate is the same.
Priscilla Sefakor Adawu
