14 June 2020

Standardized covid-19 case counts for regions in Ghana

We discussed in our earlier post that differences in population size can make it difficult to compare absolute numbers across different populations. Today we present standardized covid-19 case counts by region for Ghana to compare the severity of the outbreak by region.

The table below presents population size, cases counts and cases per 1 million population by region. The regions are ranked by total population size.

We see that generally population size is correlated with the total confirmed cases as would be expected - the regions with the largest populations tend to have higher cases. The regions with the highest cases counts currently are Greater Accra and  Ashanti which have the second largest and largest population sizes respectively.

The cases per 1 million population column shows us that the severity of the outbreak is relatively worse in some regions than can be seen by looking at the absolute numbers.

Western Region's standardized case count of 439 is higher than Ashanti Region's 349 when taking population size despite the differences in total case counts. That means Western Region can be considered the second hardest hit region after Greater Accra.

Eastern Region has a higher case count than Oti, Upper East and Western North but ranks lower than all three when cases per 1 million population is used.



* Case count data from Ghana Health Service (11-06-2020)
* Population data from Ghana Statistical Service (2019 est.)