Director-General at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye has commended the second phase of the covid-19 vaccination as successful.

According to him, the target for the program was achieved despite some challenges they encountered.

“We’ll rate it as successful. We started with a few challenges as usual, data entry issues, network issues and also, we started with a new application. Subsequently we’ve been able to cover so far 376,000 [who] have been vaccinated. By the time we were even extending it, we had done about 98.5% of the people targeted. So, I will say it’s been successful. We wish we had more vaccine to cover more people, but I believe that time will come”.

Expounding on the 376,000 individuals vaccinated, he revealed that, vaccine availability was the main determinant in coverage.

That notwithstanding, Dr. Kuma-Aboagye explained that the Service has exceeded its target of intended vaccination.

Coverage of vaccination

He further revealed that, his outfit had projected vaccinating some 20 million people eligible for the jab.

“Based on the vaccines available; we had targeted that we will do about 360,000 for those who were vaccinated between the 1^st of March and 9^th of March. But we’ve been able to exceed it to the number I’m talking about.

“So, in the very first days we’ve given about 900,000 people and those who have had the full vaccination will be about the 376,000 we are talking about. That definitely falls to less than 5% of the people who should be vaccinated but that is what we have based on [the] current situation. All efforts are on to cover as many people as possible, as vaccines become available”.

Touching on the side effect, the GHS boss disclosed the common ones churned out by the GHS which included body aches and temperature.

“As part of our communication, we had actually educated people about the possible side effects to expect. Obvious on was the fact that… some will have temperature, some will have headaches, some will have body aches. So far, we have reported mainly the common side effects of weakness, headaches [and] fever.

“So, we’ve not had any of the major ones like the clots or anything yet. There have been other reports of possible adverse effects of which we’ve had to do autopsy to check and confirm that [it’s] unrelated to the vaccination”.

Availability of vaccines

Commenting on the 350,000 delivery of vaccines from Congo, Dr. Kuma-Aboagye indicated that the vaccines were used in the second phase of the exercise. That notwithstanding, they are hopeful of receiving more in the coming days.

“That one is finished; but we’ve still not given up and we are still working very hard on the vaccine-sharing approaches. Unlike Ghana, there are many other African countries who have vaccines, who are not able to deploy them. So, I’m sure of COVAX and ECOWAS are looking at how do we make sure that we don’t let any vaccine expire”.

He further revealed that if everything goes according to plan, we “could also be beneficiaries of additional vaccines”.

“But that is just one side. The main issue is that the government is in chat with private organizations, it’s in chat with vaccine manufacturers and even other countries who may have vaccines to see how we can… buy to see how we can vaccinate more people”.