GHS administers 20.3m doses of COVID-19 vaccine nationwide

A total of 20.3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered across the country as of last Thursday, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has stated on its latest updates.

According to the service’s website monitored by the Ghanaian Times, 10,449,734 AstraZeneca vaccines had been administered out of the number.

The Service also indicated that 18,368 doses of Sputnik-V had been administered while 1,065,357 doses of Moderna vaccines had been administered across the country.

It said 5,534,776 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines had been administered while 3,291,213 doses of the COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen had been administered.

The service said 8,758,799 persons had so far been fully vaccinated out of the 22.9 million people targeted, making up a percentage of 27.6.

The number of persons who received “AT LEAST” one dose are 11,837,459 with a percentage of 51.8 while persons who received the first booster dose are 2,329,799.

Ghana experienced a surge in infections and fatalities in January 2021, entering a second wave of rising infections 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 COVID-19 variant, said to have appeared in South Africa.

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

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 the citizenry to get vaccinated in addition to adhering to all the safety precautions, to help control the pandemic and slow the development of new variants.

BY ABIGAIL ARTHUR