COVID-19: GHS administers 10m vaccine doses nationwide

A total of 10million vaccine doses have been administered across the country as at last Thursday, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said.

It comprises 6,712,407 AstraZeneca vaccines and 17,982 doses of Sputnik-V.

It said 1,048,590 doses of the Modernvaccines, 1,505,552 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines had been administered, while 740,950 doses of the COVID-19 Janssen vaccines had also been administered.

The service said 3,543,312 persons had so far been fully vaccinated out of the 20,000,859 people targeted, representing 17.7 per cent.

The number of persons receiving “AT LEAST” one dose is 7,221,427, representing 36.1 per cent.

Meanwhile, 1,161 persons have received the first dose of the booster vaccines.

Ghana experienced a surge in infections and fatalities in January 2021, entering a second wave of COVID-19. The number of daily active cases in February 2021 was as high as the peak of the first wave in June 2020.

Furthermore, Ghana was also confirmed to have recorded the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, which first appeared in South Africa.

Hence, government rolled out the vaccination exercise to help save lives in the country in March 2021.

This has, however, received low patronage by Ghanaians partly due to the belief in herbal medicine, inadequate information about COVID-19 and people being oblivious of the vaccination benefits.

For this reason, the Service has called on all and sundry to get vaccinated, and also ensure strict observance of the safety precautionary measures to help control the pandemic and slow the development of new variants.

BY ABIGAIL ARTHUR