About 376,169 people have so far received the full dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in the second round of the vaccination exercise in some parts of the country, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said.

The number comprises 194,103 females, representing 51.6 per cent, and 182,066 males or 48.4 per cent in 42 selected districts in the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Western regions.

The exercise took off on Tuesday, March 2, 2021.

Together with those who have taken only one round of the dose, the GHS has in total administered 1,228,216 doses in the first and the second rounds of the exercise.

Meeting of target

The Programmes Manager of the Extended Programme on Immunisation (EPI), Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, who made this known to the Daily Graphic, said Ghana had, therefore, met its expected target in both the first and the second rounds of the exercise.

According to him, the GHS would use lessons learnt from the recent exercise to improve on the vaccination of the general population.

He said the service would continue to monitor vaccine safety and gather data to inform decisions in the future.

Dr Amponsah-Achiano said all COVID-19 vaccines which would have expired by June 24, 2021 had been used and, therefore, there was no cause for alarm.

Presently, he said, Ghana had used all its contingency stock, but gave an assurance that more vaccines would arrive soon.

The manager said the GHS was currently preparing to vaccinate military personnel who would be going on peacekeeping in Mali.

Background

The mass COVID-19 vaccination exercise in 42 selected districts in the Greater Accra, and Western regions and Kumasi in the Ashanti Region started on March 2, 2021, and by Friday, April 30, a total of 849,527 AstraZeneca vaccines had been administered to the public.

Ghana became the first country to receive doses of vaccines from the COVAX facility which has 92 beneficiary countries signed onto it.

The country took delivery of 600,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

The package was part of a first batch of free deliveries to a number of low and middle-income countries under COVAX, a UN-backed initiative with the objective of ensuring fair access to the vaccine.

And during this year’s May Day celebration in Accra, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had said the receipt of the vaccines formed part of the government’s agenda to vaccinate the entire adult population of the country by the end of the year.

“We are determined to vaccinate some 20 million Ghanaians; that is, the entire adult population, by the end of this year and we remain on course to achieve this goal,” he said.