Happy 98.9 FM’s Obuasi correspondent, Meshak Osei has revealed that residents of Obuasi have been stigmatizing Chinese nationals living in the town and the behavior has increased after the town was declared a COVID-19 hotspot not long ago.
According to him, high levels of misinformation, ignorance and fear has led to this archaic behaviour of the people of Obuasi stigmatizing the Chinese. And this is fueled by the fact that the pandemic first broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan before breaking into other parts of the world.
Citing various instances of stigmatization, Meshak revealed that most Ghanaians in the town refuse to share taxis with Chinese nationals. “When people stop taxis and see a Chinese as a passenger, they refuse to board the vehicle. Some individuals who even have Chinese employers behave oddly around them and try as much as possible to avoid them.”
Meshak revealed that some people whom he spoke to but wish to remain anonymous believe that the virus can be contracted from the Chinese only. “People of Obuasi behave ignorantly when it comes to COVID-19 and believe that the Chinese are responsible for the virus because of what they see on the internet and hear from others.”
There have been various videos circulating in Ghanaian social media circles which attribute the food preferences of the Chinese as the root cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many have also attributed the stigmatization against the Chinese with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic because of the term ‘Chinese Virus’ used by some world leaders and some media platforms when referring to the virus.
But the reality on the ground, leading to the high infection rates in Obuasi as reported by Meshak is the disregard for the social distancing policy and other COVID-19 preventive measures outlined by the government.
Public health experts around the globe are scrambling to understand, track, and contain a new virus that appeared in Wuhan, China, at the beginning of December 2019.
The World Health Organization (WHO) named the disease caused by the virus COVID-19, which references the type of virus and the year it emerged. The WHO declared the outbreak of the virus a pandemic in March 2020.
By: Joel Sanco
