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.

Almost 10,000 confirmed cases of covid-19 in Ghana

1,840 new cases were reported in the past week since our last update to bring the confirmed case count to 9,910. This is a significant increase from the previous week's increase  of 1,106 (+734) and the increase of 896 (+944) in the week before that.

95% of new cases came from the Greater Accra (65%), Ashanti (17%), Western (8%) and Central (5%) regions.

Why do we need standardized statistics?

Let's look at data on deaths from the WHO covid-19 dashboard for 31st May 2020. The WHO dashboard has two options for statistics - total numbers which is shown in the left column and numbers per 1,000,000 population shown in the right column.

Five out of the ten countries in the column on the left column do not appear in the right column. The United States, the country with the most deaths overall, did not make it to the top 10 in deaths per 1,000,000 population. It is ranked 12 with 307 deaths per 1,000,000 population. Rather, San Marino which has recorded 42 deaths in total is leading the list of countries with deaths per 1 million population. 

This illustrates why it is important to also standardize absolute numbers when reporting statistics. While the total death toll numbers are informative by themselves, standardized figures allow us to compare the impact on the population across different countries better than absolute numbers.

Ghana passes 8,000 cases; Greater Accra passes 5,000

1,106 new cases have been confirmed in Ghana since our last update bringing the case count to 8,070. That is an increase compared to the previous week's increase of 896 (+210). Greater Accra, Ashanti, Central and Western regions make up 96% of the new cases (1061). Almost two-thirds of the new cases were in Greater Accra (708).