Vol.5. "Coronavirus Regulation in Ghana and Japan"
- ViVID
- May 13, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 30, 2020
In this 5th of the series of publications, “Stay Home Stay with ViVID”, we will try to compare political measures for fighting coronavirus between Ghana and Japan.
On January 15th, the first infected case with COVID-19 was discovered in Japan. The infected person came back from Wuhan a few days before. On the other hand, in Ghana, the first case was discovered from entrants from Norway and Turkey on March 11th. We mentioned that how speedy Ghanaian government had reacted with the initial preventive measures in vol.1: Ghanaian government decided to ban gathering people and close all schools within one week from the first case discovered. The Japanese government decided to close all schools after about one and a half months from when the first case discovered.
We suppose that the reason behind these two governments’ contrasting correspondents is due to the difference in medical resources. In Ghana, medical facilities are not sufficient for everyone, the government really needs to try not to get any more infected person. Also, the quick decision for closing border and lockdown in three cities makes us infer how serious it is for them.
However, the Ghanaian government has become the first country which has lifted lockdown in Africa. (We also mentioned this in vol.1) they lifted it four days after the Japanese government declared emergency. The lockdown had brought them a big problem of starvation since there are many poor people who earn money for the day to live. It must have been a very hard decision, seeking to keep the balance of poverty and the virus.
While the Japanese government is going to offer the benefit of 100 thousand yen for each person. How about in Ghana?
In Ghana, people can use water for free for three months. Also, about electricity, they can use it for free for three months if it’s less than 50kw/month, and they only have to pay the half price if they use more than 50kw/month. In addition, the government provides hot meals and dried food for people who are in serious poverty.
Now, we know we have different problems and measures as we are in different countries and situations.
We can’t say if they were the best decisions. However, I believe those were the best answers after both had considered their own situations to protect people’s lives
ViVID is urgently working on a new project “Fight COVID-19 with ViVID” as a means to tackle this emergency. (We will be soon launching crowdfunding too!)
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