90,000 remaining health workers to receive COVID-19 jab from today – GHS

The Ghana Health Service will from tomorrow, [Monday, March 22, 2021] continue its first phase COVID-19 vaccination exercise on some 90,000 health workers across the country.

This excludes health staff who have already taken their first jab, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said on Sunday.

At a press conference in Accra on Sunday, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the exercise will be carried out in both public and private health facilities.

“Our next phase of work is to vaccinate all other health workers across the country because they are frontline [workers] wherever they are. And that will give us about 90,000 health workers minus those who have already vaccinated”, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said.

“Trainings have been done. We have collected their names and locations and each district will have two sites for vaccination and we are hoping that within a week or two, all health workers would have been vaccinated across the country”, the Director General said.

Vaccine remains safe

As at March 21, over 468,581 persons have been vaccinated, according to the Ghana Health Service.

Although the enthusiasm has been high among Ghanaians since the start of the campaign, there are still concerns about the safety of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

This fear has been hightened after reports emerged that some member states of the European Union have suspended administering the AstraZeneca jab due to reported blood clotting issues.

Allaying such threats however, Dr Kuma-Aboagye explained that Ghana’s robust systems has yet recorded such events.

“AstraZeneca continues to be safe and other regulatory bodies like the WHO have recommended its use in the fight against the pandemic… and so everybody must participate in the exercise”, he said.

Daily Mail GH