The Director of the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), Prof Gordon Awandare, has cautioned fully vaccinated individuals to maintain wearing face masks.

Speaking in an interview, he explained that, due to the low vaccination rate nationwide, non- vaccinated persons pose risk to vaccinated people in contracting the virus.

His comment follows concerns raised over a possible third wave of Covid-19 hitting Ghana. The concerns have increased after the national vaccination plan was hit by non-availability of vaccines due to delays in acquiring more doses.

“At the moment, we are talking about less than 5% of the population being vaccinated. So, even though one may be fully vaccinated, it is only a small percentage, of the entire population that have received the full dosage.

“So, it is advisable that we still keep the masks on because so many other people are not vaccinated yet and could be carrying the virus”.

Additionally, Prof Awandare noted that, countries like the US and Belgium have approved no masks wearing in some places for vaccinated people. This, he explained, is due to the high rate of vaccination of the people.

Prof. Awandare further insists that vaccinated people need to keep their masks on for their own benefit.

New COVID-19 virus variant

Justifying his stance, Prof Awandare maintained that fully vaccinated people in some countries were being re-infected by the new virus variant.

“It is going on in Seychelles where vaccine coverage is over 60% but infections rates are going up. That is likely because of the types of variants they have there as against the vaccines they have used. So, if the vaccine is not very effective against the variants in circulation, then you have a problem”.

Furthermore, Prof Awandare advised that government must purchase effective new vaccines, to fight aggressive variants.

“We have been fortunate that the more aggressive variants, which is, the South African and the Indian ones, haven’t taken root in the local transmission. So, we’ve mainly found these in travellers. We need to maintain that. That means the mandatory quarantine we are doing at the airport needs to be maintained.

“I think that we need to be focusing on getting the Pfizer, the Moderna; those other vaccines that are effective against the more aggressive variants. Because it is inevitable that we get to a point where they start to take roots locally.”

Fully Vaccinated individuals

Meanwhile, Presidential Advisor on Health, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare, has disclosed that about 382,000 people have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

He however insisted that about 900,000 persons have received only the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

“Nearly about 900,000 people have had their first dose of vaccination and 382,000 of the stated figures have their second dose.

Also, Dr Nsiah Asare further acknowledged that number of persons vaccinated is not enough to achieve the country’s projected herd immunity. Currently, government has set a target of vaccinating 20million people.