No Covid test on arrival at Washington Dulles Airport!

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

August 03, 2021

I was surprised to note that there was no mandatory Covid testing required on my return to Washington Dulles International on August 1, 2021. The departure test result from Ghana, of all places, was accepted by the US government as sufficient.

Reverse the journey, going from the US to Ghana, and the requirement is very different.  A mandatory test would be required, even though you took one in the US and tested negative.

The mandatory testing in Ghana has been explained in various ways. 

The one from Dr. Okoe-Boye of the Ghana Covid Task Force is the most interesting.  He offered bluntly that Ghana being a sovereign state, could do what it needed to do to keep the people safe.

To base what has happened so far, with mandatory Covid testing in Ghana, on sovereignty rights is as ridiculous as providing an excuse for the stench in your powder room after use.  

Rather, Covid testing should be a matter of common sense.  And why?

Coming from the US, or another sovereign state abroad, and knowing that you have already tested negative at origin, only to be subjected to another test some 72 hours later in Ghana is bewildering enough.  

And the bewildering should not be about the test result, as some have experienced.  It should be at the idea of the mandatory second test itself, shortly after or within 72 hours of an already successful, negative test.

Before I left the US for Ghana, I tested for Covid and was negative.

On arrival in Ghana, I was subjected to a mandatory test that cost $150. 

It turned out negative.  Are we by this test stating that the regime applied In Ghana is more scientifically advanced than that obtained elsewhere, especially in first world countries?

For a fact, one can never argue that any test for Covid in Ghana would be more scientifically correct than one performed in the US.

What can be argued morally is that Ghana, though a sovereign state, is an impecunious one.  We, therefore, have the moral reason to collect the revenue to help fight Covid; an imported disease. 

So, if you want to visit Ghana, you come to help combat the disease.

After that, it will be the turn of Ghana to be transparent with the Covid money collected and how this went to help combat the disease.

Dr. Okoe-Boye’s argument that Ghana, a sovereign state, has the right to conduct the mandatory test to protect its people and for public health reasons, must negate the fact that similar arrivals from Ghana to countries with the same sovereignty rights, but more advanced than Ghana on the scientific tier, do not require mandatory retesting for Covid.

His argument beggars common sense or makes the sovereignty issue he advanced odd. 

As for his attempt to cancel out Diasporan complainants, he ought to know that the complainants are not doing so because they are from the Diaspora and should know better.  They are complaining because of what is happening on the ground in Ghana, concerning the testing.

On my return to the US, the test from Ghana was good enough to allow me entry.  There was no need for the US to exercise its sovereignty rights to demand a retest that has already be done outside, in my case in Ghana.

This odd situation in Ghana has allowed some Diaspora citizens to suspect corruption:  To be specific a sham mandatory demand to fleece travelers.

Also, what must be obvious to all by now is the justifiable need for government to raise the money in this poor country to fight the disease.  But this need does not override the corruption aspect that the mandatory demand draws in.

The government gets its share of the loot.  What the money collected is used for presently is another matter, one that must be the concern now, not the sovereignty issue raised. 

If most of the money raised from the exercise goes directly to benefit the fight against COVID, many of us will be first to hail this government as one of the most moral.

But where money is concerned in Ghana, the corruptive intent cannot be ruled out.  It may even be the dominant drive behind the exercise.  What is needed at this stage is for the Covid Task Force to be transparent about the money collected.

The cost is $150 per passenger, non-citizens, on arrival.  For the return, there is another test for the approximate cost of $45. 

There is also a case of Covid levy of 1% on purchases registered at stores.

From all this, plus the number of passenger arrivals on flights on daily basis in Ghana, one can conclude that Covid has become an income stream generator for the government.

Again, if the intent is to use the money for COVID combat, all the better for the nation.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid infections, arrivals and departures at Accra International totaled 702,651, according to Traffic Statistics, Ghana Airport (Traffic Statistics – GACL)

Travels to and from Ghana are back with vengeance in 2021.  A rise in traffic by 50% on the figures from 2020, can bring the total to over 1 million passenger arrivals, which will still be lower than the 2 million-plus recorded in 2019.

Indeed, monies collected on arrivals could have gone to fight Covid, if the exercise was based on both moral grounds and sovereign rights.  It could have gone to support the purchasing of more vaccine doses, excluding corruption.

As of July 21, 2021, the number of vaccine doses administered so far was 1,271,000, under 5% of the population.  The revenue stream from Covid could have gotten more than twice the number vaccinated.

Even at the fraudulent $19 cost per vaccine unit offered by the government, we could still have purchased more doses with the additional revenue stream from the mandatory Covid testing on arrivals than the government has managed to purchase on its own so far.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, August 03, 2021.

Permission to publish:  Please feel free to publish or reproduce, with credits, unedited.