A policy to that effect that among others outlines category of persons to be given a booster has been completed and set to be announced soon.

The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, who disclosed this to the Ghanaian Times in an interview last Thursday hinted however, that pregnant women and children would be considered for boosters.

“The good news is that we have gone through all the processes and completed a booster policy and will in few days announce it. The booster would cover people who qualify for boosters; children, pregnant women among others and the type of vaccines that will be given to them.

Hitherto, we did not vaccinate pregnant women but we have reviewed the policy and may cover them this time around because we think we have enough evidence to add pregnant women to the eligibility criteria,” he indicated.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye further pointed out that one may not need to take the initial vaccines received during the booster roll out for needed protection.

“There is enough evidence now that points to the fact that vaccine mix and match is allowed hence for our boosters, people may not take the vaccines they originally took because eventually, they produce same antibodies to protect you from the virus,” he noted.

The Director-General stated that the country currently had about 10 million vaccines in stock for its ongoing vaccination drive and more was expected in the coming months.

He said as of January this year, Ghana had received about 24 million COVID-19 vaccines of which, over 9 million had been distributed so far.

DrKuma-Aboagyereiterated the Service’s resolve to get more people vaccinated to attain herd immunity by the middle of the year.

He explained that the vaccine mandate was one of the means the government would employ to encourage vaccination among the population saying “the mandates are to protect us all from the COVID-19 infection.”

“Vaccine mandate doesn’t mean we are going to catch you and force you down to vaccinate.If there are areas of high risk and we advise not to go there and you still want to go there, you get a vaccine, if you are coming to my party and I say if u are not vaccinated don’t come, you have an option and this is being done to protect all of us,” he said.

Meanwhile, there is a gradual decline in the country’s active cases from 13, 007 on January 5, 2022 to 9,020 as of January 10, 2022.

Seven deaths have been recorded in the last two days shooting the death toll to 1,343.

A total of 508 new cases have been recorded as of January 10 with 44 persons and 12 others in severe and critical conditions.