PHOTO: Health Minister Dr. Jallah
By William Selmah, wselmah@gmail.com
Liberia’s Health Minister Dr. Wilhelmina Jallah has differed with the Center for Disease Control (CDC’s) latest health travel advisory issued on Liberia, which placed the country among the most unsafe places to travel in the world.
The advisory places Liberia in the Level 4 category of countries affected by the latest surge in the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Dr. Jallah termed the CDC alert as “premature and ill-advised” saying it is not possible that Liberia which has been in Level 1, could automatically leapfrog to Level 4 without first being named in Levels 2 and 3.
Addressing a regular news conference at the Ministry of Information Culture and Tourism (MICAT) on Thursday, she said “there is someone inside Liberia sending messages outside, but I think it’s premature. You can’t move from 1 straight to 4’, Dr. Jallah noted.
The minister said it would have been understandable that with the latest hike in new cases had Liberia been placed either in category 2 or 3.
She said the data used to determine Liberia’s ranking did not come from the Health Ministry, but unknown outside sources.
Notwithstanding Dr. Jallah continued that that they were speaking with the CDC officials and will evaluate data of the current outbreak in order to ensure improvement
Giving an update of the state of the outbreak in Liberia, she disclosed that 193 cases have been recorded since June 2021, with the total number of active cases standing at 1619.
Of the current reported cases, Montserrado which remains the outbreak’s epicenter in Liberia, has 127 cases, followed by Margibi County with 1 cases.
Gbarpolu County and Grand Cape Mount have 12 cases each, according to Dr. Jallah.
With the exception of River Gee and Grand Kru County, the rest of the 13 counties have all reported new cases, she said.
In total, the minister disclosed that in June alone, 55 succumbed to the disease, of all of the total number of deaths recorded since March 2021. This represents 48% of the total number of deaths reported.