Director of Risk Communication for COVID-19 taskforce, Dr. Dacosta Aboagye, has disclosed that delays encountered in the second vaccination of individuals will not affect the stipulated month-long exercise.
According to him, they are readily doing their possible best to resolve the challenges encountered in some areas.
His comments follow delays currently being encountered in the Ashanti Region due to some hiccups.
Commenting on the delay in vaccination, Dr. Aboagye explained that, his team is currently in talks with the Ashanti Regional directorate. In a bid to address the issue, he averred that they have advised the directorate to ensure people adhere to the COVID-19 protocols.
“We are in touch with the Ashanti Regional team to make sure that they start in earnest. Obviously, the exercise is very huge but we are trying so hard to start today as we said. Some centres have already started in Greater Accra and also in Kasoa. The delay will certainly not affect the exercise, we have from the 19th to the 26th. This time what we did was that… some people might have received text messages and the dates that they have to visit the center with their vaccination details and others. So, we’ve put in a lot of effort to obviously make sure that every Ghanaian who is within that bracket, that is from 1st of March to 9th March is vaccinated accordingly.
“We offered training to brief all those vaccinators, so I’m certainly sure that they know. But sometimes, some of these things are bound to happen”.
COVID-19 Card enhanced features
Dr. Aboagye further commented on the unavailability of the new COVID-19 cards at centres queued by individuals to vaccinate. He however argued that, there is ample supply of the cards to cater for their inoculation.
“I have to check because we certainly know that we sent them to the various regions. So, I am surprised… but we have enough cards to cover the 360,000 population that are to vaccinated. We also have more, but that is what we’ve dispatched and… normally we have excess. So, we have done everything possible to make sure that we give all the centres cards. We have a decentralised system, so we dispatch from Accra to the regional health directorate stores and bear in mind the conditions in which we have to store the vaccines. So, we’ve done all those arrangements, so I’m certainly sure that in the next few hours things will be in place…”.
360,000 people set to receive second jab
Meanwhile, the Ghana Health Service has commenced inoculation of about 360,000 persons who received the first jab of the Covid-19 vaccine in March this year. The exercise will end on May 26.
Among those qualified includes, Healthcare workers, Frontline Security Personnel, the media and persons with underlining health conditions.
Dr Patrick Kuma –Aboagye, Director General of GHS earlier revealed that the second dose would boost immunity. Additionally, he averred it will ensure maximum protection of the persons to be vaccinated.
According to him, persons taking the second jab of the vaccine from Wednesday, May 19 are likely to experience the same adverse effects related to vaccination.
