Two Old Fadama residents on the run after testing positive for coronavirus

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Two persons, a man and a woman who tested positive for coronavirus at Old Fadama, a slum community in Accra are on the run.

They have been on the run three days since their coronavirus status was confirmed, as monitored from a JoyNews interview just now.

Details about their identities remain questionable but the woman is a head potter, also known as ‘Kayayei’.

According to residents, the head potter is a mother of three who lives in a single room with 15 others.

Old Fadama is an urban slum area hosting most of Accra’s marginalised economic classes, including head potters(kayayei), mechanics and traders.
Blood samples of some residents in this area was taken on Sunday April 5, 2020. Some 24 hours later, the results showed, the two were positive.

Attempts by contact tracers to get the two to agree to go under isolation failed.
Some health officials had to fall on the police to succumb to the need for self-isolation.

On Thursday, contact tracers were met with resistance from some residents at Old Fadama when they tried tracing persons who may have had contact with the two infected individuals.

“Today, the team went back to find her but there were no traces of her. There was chaos when we got there. Everybody was coming around to prevent the health authorities from taking blood samples of persons who had been traced,” the JoyNews reporter said.

According to him, the rumour within the community was that the contact tracers were only there to draw their blood to be used for rituals.

Opinion leaders in the area have agreed to assist contact tracers and the police to identify the infected persons to submit to treatment on Sunday.