The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has announced it will soon open COVID-19 testing laboratories at some major land borders in anticipation of the reopening of the land borders in neighboring countries.

According to the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye, the centres are almost ready and expected to be operational soon. He revealed that the project was done with support from United Nations Development Programme and some other partners.

“We are developing laboratories and we will put one in Aflao, Elubo and Paga. It’s almost 80 percent complete and we hope that very soon, all these laboratories will be there so that all these people can be tested.”
Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye

Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye disclosed the Service is preparing adequately for the opening of the land borders by neighboring countries to reduce the risk of infection. The GHS Director General intimated that in order to protect residents in the border towns, the GHS will also undertake a vaccination exercise at the border to ensure that those people who are coming in and moving out of the country are also protected. “We will also provide logistics support for vaccination activities at the border post.”

“Vaccination of border residents is part of ongoing COVID-19 exercise. I mean you know how our borders are: In the same town with one chief, one half is one country and the other half is [another country]. Now, we’ve made some significant changes at our border post.”
Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye

GHS putting measures in place at KIA

Dr. Kumah Aboagye indicated that GHS is still putting out some precautionary measures to reduce importation risk at the airport. These include full vaccination for international travels entering the country through the Kotoka International Airport among other measures.

“International travelers, whether Ghanaians, non-Ghanaians and foreign residents will be required to be fully vaccinated prior to departure. And when we say you are fully vaccinated, one dose of Johnson&Johnson is considered as fully vaccinated and the others are two doses.”
Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye

Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye touching on the vaccines procured indicated that about one million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines have been discarded so far in the country. He revealed that there’s always vaccine wastage which is from breakage or the storage which is not optimum and so these vaccines are discarded.

“The proportion that we have so far discarded is 4.4%. So we are way within the normal range of vaccine wastage that is acceptable. And that comes up to about one million doses but if you look at the fact that some of the vaccines arrive two to three months to expiry it is expected that you will get some wastage along.”
Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye