The number of Ghanaians going to take their jabs against the COVID-19 vaccines have reduced to the dismay of the Ghana Health Service’s (GHS) Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI).
According to the EPI, the rate at which the Ghanaian community is trooping to vaccination centers is low and not encouraging. “Patronization of the jabs have gone down and we will not say Ghanaians are not taking the jab at all. We say the rate has gone done because we expected the vaccination rate to have doubled or tripled. First we were asking for the vaccines and now that they are here, we are asking where are the people?” Programs Manager for the EPI, Dr. Kwame Amponsah- Achiano stated.
He revealed Ghana recently received some 8 million doses of vaccines of which 4 million have been distributed for onward vaccination. “But the rate of vaccination has been low. People are not turning up as expected. Over the past few days, we have just vaccinated over 300,000 people and that is bad because we could’ve done better. When the vaccines were limited, we vaccinated around the same number of people and this is not encouraging.”
The health professional revealed that the EPI still has over 4 million vaccines in storage and advised the Ghanaian populace to come out in their numbers for the jabs, “because the best way to fight a pandemic is when the case count is low and not when it is high. Your best bet is when cases are down so you protect a lot of people at a time like this.”
Ghana is still expecting more vaccines in the next few days and will get some 7 million extra by close of 2021.
Dr. Kwame Amponsah- Achiano however revealed that the vaccines in stock currently will expire between November and January 2021, and urged the Ghanaian populace which is yet to take their jabs to do so immediately.
