IPNews-Monrovia: Report reaching the Independent Probe Newspaper, says the deadly coronavirus is now in the Republic of Ghana with Two cases of infection confirmed by Ghanaian, Health authorities.
Ghana Health Minister, Agyeman-Manu confirmed late Thursday, March 12, 2020, in a statement that both individuals with the coronavirus infection returned to Ghana from Norway and Turkey.
According to the ministry, both patients are currently being quarantined and has initiated the process for contact tracing.
The statement said that the two cases were received at the same time from the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research.
Economists have warned that the coronavirus potential may have a divesting effect on the travel tourism of Ghana and Liberia, which may result into the loss of 66 million (3.4 pp), in the short term, 113 million (5.8 pp), in the medium term and 234 million (12.0 pp) in the long term if the spread of COVID-19 degenerates.
It may be recalled, beyond the terrible toll in human lives and suffering during the Ebola virus outbreak, the epidemic had a measurable economic impact in terms of forgone output; higher fiscal deficits; rising prices; lower real household incomes and greater poverty.
These economic impacts included the costs of healthcare and forgone productivity of those directly affected but, more importantly, they aroused from the aversion behavior of others in response to the disease.
In the short-term (2014) impact on output, estimated using on-the-ground data to inform revisions to sector-specific growth projections, on the order of 2.1 percentage points (pp) of GDP in Guinea (reducing growth from 4.5 percent to 2.4 percent); 3.4 pp of GDP in Liberia (reducing growth from 5.9 percent to 2.5 percent) and 3.3 pp of GDP in Sierra Leone (reducing growth from 11.3 percent to 8.0 percent).
This forgone output for these three countries corresponds to US$359 million in 2013 prices.
The short-term fiscal impacts were also large, at US$113 million (5.1 percent of GDP) for Liberia; US$95 million (2.1 percent of GDP for Sierra Leone) and US$120 million (1.8 percent of GDP) for Guinea.
These estimates were best viewed as lower-bounds. Slow containment scenarios would almost certainly lead to even greater impacts and corresponding financing gaps in both 2014 and 2015.
Governments in the region mitigated some of these impacts on their budgets through reallocation of resources, but much international support was still needed.
As it was far from certain that the epidemic would be fully contained by December 2014 and in light of the considerable uncertainty about its future trajectory, two alternative scenarios were used to estimate the medium-term (2015) impact of the epidemic, extending to the end of calendar year 2015.
A “Low Ebola” scenario corresponds to rapid containment within the three most severely affected countries (henceforth the “core three countries”), while “High Ebola” corresponds to slower containment in the core three countries, with some broader regional contagion.
The medium-term impact (2015) on output for Liberia was estimated to be 4.2pp of GDP under Low Ebola, or 11.7pp of GDP under High Ebola.
It may further be recalled, the economic impact of Ebola extended beyond the devastating healthcare. According to the CDC using World Bank projections 6, $2.2 billion in GDP was “lost” in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2015.
The disease had widespread socioeconomic effects. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia suffered from lower investment and a substantial loss in private sector growth, declining agricultural production (leading to concerns about food security) and a decrease in cross-border trade as restrictions on movement, goods, and services increased.
Using Oxford Economics’ forecast prior to the Ebola epidemic, it is estimated that Sierra Leone “lost” over $67 million in direct Travel & Tourism GDP following the epidemic, equal to 1.6% of total economy GDP (Figure A2).
Despite robust growth in 2015 and 2016, direct Travel & Tourism GDP has not rebounded to levels that were forecast pre-Ebola. Figure 8 shows that direct Travel & Tourism GDP in Guinea also suffered because of Ebola, with an estimated $75 million7 “lost” following the epidemic in 2014, equal to 0.9% of total economy GDP.
The impacts of Ebola on the affected countries were severe and not limited to the Travel & Tourism sector. Currencies also suffered.
