The Ghana Health Service (GHS) says about 360,000 persons who received the first jab of Covishiled, the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in March this year will receive their second jab from tomorrow, Wednesday, May 19 to 26.
These are Healthcare workers, Frontline Security Personnel, the Media, Persons with underlining health conditions, the aged, frontline members of the Executive, Legislature, Judiciary and other essential service providers who were inoculated in the initial 43 districts in the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Central regions.
Dr Patrick Kuma –Aboagye, Director General of GHS said at a press briefing in Accra on Tuesday that the second dose would boost immunity and ensure maximum protection of the persons to be vaccinated.
He said persons taking the second jab of the vaccine from Wednesday were likely to experience the same adverse effect related to vaccination.
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“There were people who had no side effects during their first vaccination, They may have it this time or may not have it at all,” he explained.
Dr Kuma Aboagye said the vaccination centres would be communicated to all via text messages and urged all persons due to be vaccinated from tomorrow to go to centres with their vaccination cards.
“We have also updated our cards and we are advocating that you go to where you received your first dose with your card, which will be replaced right after the second vaccination with a new card with more enhanced features,” he said.
He said the vaccination card had been enhanced to check the use of fake cards, saying, as soon as you were fully vaccinated, a hologram would be placed on your card as a proof that you were fully vaccinated.
The Director General reiterated the need for the public to keep adhering to the COVID-19 safety protocols by wearing face masks, using alcohol-based hand sanitizers, coughing or sneezing into tissues and washing of hands with soap under running water.
Ghana, on Tuesday, March 2, kicked off its mass COVID-19 vaccination exercise in 42 selected districts in the Greater Accra, Kumasi and Western regions.
As of Friday, April 30, a total of 849,527 AstraZeneca vaccines had been administered to the public.
Ghana recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 12, 2020. So far 92,513 cases have been confirmed with 783 deaths. There are 1583 confirmed cases.
The novel coronavirus was first recorded in the Wuhan city of China in December 2019.
Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that are common among animals. In rare cases, they are what scientists call zoonotic, meaning they can be transmitted from animals to humans, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It has an incubation period of four to six days and fatal, especially for those with a weakened immune system – the elderly and the very young. It could also result in pneumonia and bronchitis.
