Almost two million people given COVID-19 vaccination in seven days – GHS

The Ghana Health Service says it has vaccinated almost two million persons in seven days during the National COVID-19 Vaccination Days Campaign period.

Kwame Amponsah-Achianoo, Programme Manager for the Extended Programme on Immunization, GHS, said the campaign went well though the set target was not met.

“Without the campaign and on the average, we administer about 1.3 million doses in a month and the highest for a month was during the Vaccination month in December when we administered almost 3 million doses,” he said.

The Ministry of Health and the GHS on January 31 declared February 2 to 6 National COVID-19 vaccination days in efforts to increase vaccine uptake among the public.

The campaign sought to vaccinate 20 percent of unvaccinated persons by administering 2.5 million doses in five days to all persons 15 years and above and pregnant women.

Dr Amponsa- Achiano said normal vaccination for all eligible persons was still ongoing and encouraged persons who were yet to receive their jabs, to do so.

He said rumours, misinformation and disinformation about the vaccine and the perceived low risk of contracting the virus among the public was still a challenge.

“People should not think that the disease is gone, its not, we are really treading on a difficult terrain now, we don’t know what the behavior of the virus is going to be in the next few weeks or months, what we need to do now is to get vaccination to reduce infections,” he said

The Programme Manager said Ghana had as of February 14, 2022, received a total of 27,413,400 varied COVID-19 vaccines out of, which 19,333,760 had been distributed.

As of February 16, 2022, a total of 12,343,356 doses have been administered, with at least 8,632,533 persons receiving a first dose, 4,704,067 fully vaccinated with 102,274 persons receiving their first booster doses.

Source: GNA