Over 200,000 have received first COVID-19 vaccine dose

Over 200,000 people have been vaccinated so far in the first week of the National Vaccination Programme.

At a press briefing on Monday, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said the service database has 220,252 on record as having been vaccinated.

But this figure is expected to rise as the database is updated.

“Greater Accra alone has vaccinated 128,088 but they have about 58,000 [persons] vaccinated yet to be entered [into the database].” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye explained.

The biggest day for vaccinations was on Saturday, March 6 with 46,780 persons vaccinated.

The Greater Kumasi area has seen 69,325 persons vaccinated.

Ghana was the first recipient of COVID-19 vaccine doses distributed by COVAX, a global vaccine sharing initiative.

Ghana took delivery of 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India on February 24.

The government expects to take delivery of 2 million AstraZeneca Vaccines by the end of May also from the COVAX facility.

“We are expecting that between now and probably in May, we are expecting about two more million AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facilities.”

He said there will be a focus on “all health workers in the country to ensure that they are also safe and they are able to render services.”

Dr. Kuma-Aboagye added that an app is being developed to aid the vaccination process.

“We are currently going to adapt a locally developed app which will allow us to be able to schedule and do a preregistration before you go and vaccinate.”

“It will generate your COVID-passport for you so we know all those who are getting and the database will be in Ghana,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye added.