How Ghana Uses Drones Technology To Fight The Covid-19 Pandemic

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Drones

Drones Technology in Covid-19 Treatment

Ghana started using drones delivery technology in the fight against the new coronavirus (Covid-19) disease pandemic in 2021.

The California-based company, Zipline, who created and owns the drone-delivery operations in Ghana, started flying samples for testing from over 1000 health facilities in rural Ghana to testing centres in Accra and Kumasi.

They started flying 51 samples from Omenako drone distribution centre to Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, which is in Accra, in April 2020.

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CEO of Zipline, Keller Rinaudo, revealed that Zipline wants to help Ghana in their fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Using contactless drone delivery to transport COVID-19 test samples would allow the government to respond quickly to the pandemic and help more lives,” Zipline CEO, Keller Rinaudo, said in an official statement.

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The use of Zipline drones increases the speed at which samples reach medical testing centres, which analyze samples for COVID-19.

Before the use of drones, Ghana relied on truck delivery, which always took time in delivery and delayed tests.

The issues of distance, road traffic, and others reduced the number of samples which health workers could test.

But with drones, which can travel 70 miles (116km) round trip, COVID-19 testing centres receive samples within hours, which helps them run more tests.

Ghana’s President, Akudo-Addo, believes that Ghana can fight the pandemic if the country could run more COVID-19 tests in places.

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So far, Ghana has tested over 68,000 people for COVID-19, out of which over 1042 people tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, and over 99 recovered, while over 9 people died.

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To make delivering of Covid-19 vaccines faster, Ghana uses the drones to transport the vaccines and it has so far helped them as it also delivers the vaccines on time before the expiring date as it is now said that Covid-19 vaccines arrive on or after their expiring date because of delayed delivery.

Download UNICEF PDF on how to use Drone to combat Covid-19.

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