The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Kumah Aboagye has revealed that out of the over 1.2 million Ghanaians vaccinated, about 800 plus have had a single dose and 400 are fully vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine while over 450,000 are still waiting for their second dose.
“So far, we have vaccinated over 1.2 million, about 800 plus of this number have been vaccinated with a single dose and about 400 have received full or double dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. This means that we still have over 450,000 people waiting for the second dose so that they can also be fully vaccinated”. Dr. Kumah Aboagye said.
He however explained that “every dose is a booster, what is wrong is when you take it before a certain time which you don’t get benefits from but of course, the longer you wait, the more the antibodies drop but we know for fact that it protects you for about 6months”.
Dr. Aboagye is hopeful that the country will take delivery of more vaccines to fill the gap.
“We are still hoping that the vaccines which we are expecting about 249,000 Covax and another 249,000 from Korea will make up for the gap”.
He added that “even though they are due for the second dose, they are still better off than those who are not vaccinated at all because they still have some level of protection”.
He assured Ghanaians that the country has beefed up its storage capacity to be able to take more vaccines particularly the ultra-low one’s.
“Base on our cold-chain capacity which we didn’t have at the beginning of the virus, we can now handle any vaccine be it Sputnik, Moderna, Pfizer or any of the ultra-low vaccines”.
He added that every region is going to have covid-19 fridges to store ultra-low vaccines.
“We also have our usual cold-chain which is well efficient , we have added 50 more fridges, we are expecting support from UNICEF and JICA to boost not only the storage but also the Vans to move delivery between the districts and the regions”.
He continued that “we are now ready to take any vaccine especially related to covid-19 cold-chain. As for our deployment capabilities, it is no doubt, except that we did not have storage for the ultra-low which we now have”.
