GUINEA-BISSAU PM TESTS POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS
BISSAU - Guinea-Bissau’s Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam has tested positive for coronavirus, the health ministry has said. Interior Minister Botche Cande and two other ministers also have Covid-19. Nabiam said that several members of an interministerial coronavirus committee had the disease. Guinea-Bissau has a poor healthcare system due to mismanagement and a lack of resources. The country has so far confirmed 205 coronavirus cases and one death.. And health authorities in Liberia have reportedly invited the National Security Agency “to screen” the phones of laboratory technicians because of coronavirus test results leaking to the public, the independent Monrovia’s OK-FM has reported. Quoting technicians, the station reported that the action became necessary when news spread on social media that President George Weah had tested positive for the virus, information that the president’s office has since denied. News about the president’s Covid-19 status spread after the ministers of Justice and Information tested positive of the virus. But the president’s chief of staff Nathaniel McGill has phoned into radio programs saying “the president is healthy.” The head of the National Public Health Institute, the institution leading the Covid-19 fight, Dr Mosoka Fallah, declined to comment on the involvement of state security in screening the phones of lab technicians. He told OK-FM “we are taking every measure to ensure patients’ confidentiality.” Meanwhile, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said on Wednesday a rigorous programme of testing for coronavirus and tracing the contacts of those found positive has helped Ghana avoid an explosion in cases that could have overwhelmed its health system. Ghana has reported 1, 671 cases with 18 deaths since March 13. Akufo-Addo said around 110, 000 people had been tested, in a population of some 31 million, and the share of positive tests has remained consistent at around 1.5 percent. –