Breaking News: Ghana ends three-week lock-down claiming success on coronavirus fight

Ghana's President Nana Akufo Addo has lifted the three-week lock-down in the country claiming there has been huge progress in the fight against Coronavirus pandemic.

Despite lifting the lock-down for commercial activities to begin from Monday, schools and other public institutions will remain under lock-down for the foreseeable future.

The ban on social gatherings including religious gatherings will remain in force while the government seeks to navigate the country out of the difficulties brought by the three-week lock-down.

Th country’s borders remain closed for the next two weeks while a strict adherence to social distancing protocol, remain in place.

Mr Akufo-Addo said the decision to lift the ban follows achievements made with aggressive contact tracing and enhanced testing capacities leading to strong containment of the disease.

“In view of our ability to undertake aggressive contact tracing of infected persons, the enhancement of our capacity to test, the expansion in the numbers of our treatment and isolation centres, our better understanding of the dynamism of the virus, the ramping up of our domestic capacity to produce our own personal protective equipment, sanitisers and medicines, the modest successes chalked at containing the spread of the virus in Accra and Kumasi, and the severe impact on the poor and vulnerable, I have taken the decision to lift the three-week-old restriction on movements in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area and Kasoa, and the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area and its contiguous districts, with effect from 1 am on Monday, 20^th April,” Akufo-Addo said.

Three weeks ago the leader of the country placed four major cities, Accra, Tema, Kumasi and Kasoa under a two-week lock-down to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

He extended it by another one week but the biting impact of the lock-down economically and the progress of contact tracing has led to the decision to ease movement.

This is meant to boost the economy while injecting some confidence that the country has beaten the fight against the pandemic that has killed over 150,000 people worldwide.