COVID-19 - looking back five years on

On 23 March 2020, the UK entered into its first lockdown following the rapid spread of a respiratory illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

A week later, Ghana entered into a partial lockdown of Accra and Kumasi.

The spread of the disease changed how we lived, socialised and worked with public gatherings becoming a distant past, and social distancing and facemasks becoming the order of the day.

Global infections from the virus stood at over 704 million according to reporting site Worldometers*.

Almost 25 million people contracted the virus in the UK with over 232,000 people dying of the disease. In Ghana, over 172,000 cases were reported with over 1,400 dying from the disease.

The transmission of Covid-19 to the African shores was anticipated, by many, to devastate the Continent. But Professor Dr James Affram Adjaye, director and chair of Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine in Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany outlines why his research challenged that notion.

In this post, we look back at Professor Adjaye’s work in this 2022 interview.

Learn more about his work into Covid-19 transmission from the West to West Africa.

*Worldometers stopped reporting Covid-19 cases in April 2024.