The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has announced it is resuming the COVID-19 vaccination exercise throughout the country today, Friday 24 September 2021. This, it says, is to enable more people get vaccinated.
In a statement signed by the Director-General of the GHS, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye,; he indicated that this phase of the exercise is opened to the general public adding that persons 18 years and older who have never received a vaccine or have received only one dose of AstraZeneca are to participate in the exercise.
“The Ghana Health Service wishers to inform the general public that it has taken delivery of additional doses of COVID-19 vaccines. As part of the rollout plan, the Service is continuing the vaccination exercise starting from Friday 24 September 2021”.
Ghana Health Service
The GHS also in the statement said all eligible persons are advised to take along their valid photo ID cards when visiting any designated centre within their respective regions for vaccination.
Also, “Persons due for the second dose of AstraZeneca should preferably send the ID card presented for the first dose as well as their COVID-19 vaccination card. By this release, the Service is again entreating the general public to continue to adhere to all COVID-19 protocols such as the appropriate wearing of face marks, maintaining hand hygiene and physical distancing”.
Ghana Health Service
Government not relenting on vaccination efforts
The Ghana Health Service further reassured the general public that the country is not relenting on its efforts at acquiring additional vaccines to control the COVID-19 epidemic. This follows the government’s target of getting 20 million citizens vaccinated before the end of 2020 as part of measures to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.
The vaccination exercise which has been ongoing since March 2021, has so far seen over one million persons having received at least one dose of AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V or Johnson & Johnson vaccine with nearly 800,000 of them fully vaccinated.
According to data from the GHS, as of September 23,2021 about 1,643,172 vaccine doses had been administered in Ghana, with some persons only receiving the first dose. The country so far has 777,750 persons fully vaccinated, which is 50 per cent way short of the government’s target of 20 million by the end of 2021. Additionally, Ghana has so far secured over 3.2 million vaccines, some of which are yet to be rolled out.
In addition to the Astrazeca jabs available, Ghana has 1.2 million Moderna vaccines and over 500,000 doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccines in waiting. And in a recent development, the government of the United State of America (USA) has promised to donate some 1.3 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Ghana in addition to the 1.2 million Moderna vaccines already received from them on 4th September 2021.
On the case count, Ghana has cumulatively recorded 126,146 cases of the virus with 1,139 deaths. Active cases have slowly been dropping with the 4,358 recorded last week reducing to 4,015.
