Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, says the construction of a number of COVID-19 Treatment Centers is underway in the country.

Mr. Agyeman Manu said the surge in COVID-19 cases has prompted this response from the government.

Speaking at the sod cutting ceremony for work to commence on the Agenda 111 Hospital projects, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu said the project is ongoing and will boost the country’s capacity in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Works are currently ongoing for these treatment centres at the Kumasi Treatment center at Sewua; Adaklu in the Volta Region, Zebilla in the Upper East Region, Sefwi Asawinso in the Western North Region and Korle-Bu in Accra,” he said.

The Minister, during his vetting in February 2021 said all the COVID-19 treatment centres under construction will be completed by the end of this year.

“At the onset of COVID, the first instruction was for all district hospitals to create spaces to fight COVID-19. Honestly, district hospitals have never had ICUs to the level that can take care of severe and critical patients, so they can take care of severe and critical patients, so they kept on referring them to regional hospitals”.

“Unfortunately, almost all the money we were supposed to have utilised went into the procurement of PPE, facemasks, sanitisers and gowns for doctors. So the project stalled a bit. The second tranche of the World Bank support is now giving us room to advance money to contractors. I believe that by close of the year, all these treatment centres would have been completed,” he said.