Award-winning investigative journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni has called on Ghanaians to desist from insulting those asking questions on Ghana’s COVID-19 situation.
He the interrogation of figures by Ghanaians is important in the fight against this novel coronavirus.
The former Joy FM reporter made this remarks after a special aide to ex-President John Mahama, Joyce Mogtari Bawa faced a barrage of insults for questioning Ghana’s recovery rates.
wondered how possible it was to have 790 persons recover within a day after the Ghana Health Service updated the number of recovered cases to show that the said number had recovered of the virus with a space of 24 hours.
“How the hell did 790 more recover overnight! We must….” she had tweeted in response to the announcement, attracting widespread outright insults and condemnation especially from supporters of the governing New Patriotic Party(NPP).
In a post on social media, Manasseh offered a subtle support to Joyce Bawa by stating: “When I saw the latest number of Covid-19 recoveries, I was happy, but the first question that hit me was: “how did it happen”? I’m not doubting those responsible for putting out the figures, but I need to know how the testing of those being treated is done before they are declared fit. Are they done based on each patient’s state of health and they are announced as and when they test negative for the second time or they are done in bulk for which reason we had this exponential rise in recoveries in one day?”
“It is not wrong to ask questions. It’s not wrong to interrogate figures. If all along we’ve been recording single and low double digits of recoveries, and one day we are giving such a huge figure, one is inclined to seek further explanations. And it won’t be wrong for those who put out the figures to give that information.”
“Whenever there was an abnormal rise in the number of reported cases, we were given reasons. For instance, we were told how a factory in Tema led to the rise on one occasion. They told us why some figures were up abnormally because of the mandatory quarantine and testing,” he noted.
