By Landing Colley
A new coronavirus projection showed that 300,000 cases is expected to hit the country within 300 days if social distancing is ignored, the Minister of Health told lawmakers.
According to Dr Ahmad Samateh, this is just a projection of the year but “when it peak, we expect to have 3,000 cases per day and at peak there will be 10, 000 active cases in The Gambia.”
But he said “with strict social distancing there will be reduction in contact by 50% and they will expect a total of one thousand six hundred (1600) cases in three hundred (300) days and a total of 30 active cases per-day at the peak.”
He said 94 people are currently under quarantine with total number of 375 people completed their mandatory days of quarantine, adding that a total of 1,440 tests have been conducted with 23 confirmed cases.
The Kotu national public health laboratory is ready and they will start doing the testing and Medical Research Council (MRC) is also extending the testing size to Keneba, and Basse so that people will not have to come all the way down here to get tested, he disclosed.
According to him, he has been carrying out a lot of contact tracing in the country as it is corner stone in the response of prevention and contain main stages, and most of positive cases 76.9 cases were all confirmed while undergoing quarantine which means the risk of their association with the people when they became positive.
The people that have gone under quarantine are tested again before they live the quarantine center and this was initiated in the Gambia before the WHO declared it.
“We may test early those contact before they start sharing the virus, they will initially be negative when reality they are positive, and this have prevented many infected people been discharge in to the community,” he said.