Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has reiterated that no incident of Blood Clotting was reported during its Adverse Events Monitoring Investigations in the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination exercise.
He said contrary to reports of blood clotting in some European countries, Ghana’s vaccination programme was well patronized with over 400,000 people receiving their first jab of the vaccine.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye in an update on the COVID-19 vaccination programme on Sunday, announced that the Service had so far vaccinated 468,581 people as of 1130 hours on March 21.
Out of the figure, 1,575 people reported minor adverse effects, including headaches, fever, pains at injection spots and general bodily pains.
Of the total 260,954 people were vaccinated in the Greater Accra Region, comprising 126,165 females and 134,789 males and Ashanti Region had vaccinated 195,449 made up of 110,120 females and 84,729 males.
The Central Region vaccinated 12,178 people, comprising 6,182 females and 5,996 males.
The Government commenced inoculation of COVID-19 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines in 43 districts in the Greater Accra, Central and Ashanti regions, which are regarded as the epicentres of respiratory disease.
It started with people with underlying health conditions, those who are 60 years and above, members of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, as well as media practitioners in epicentres of the Coronavirus disease.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye stated that the GHS from Monday, March 22, will begin the vaccination of 90,000 health workers outside the COVID-19 epicentres in the country by creating two Vaccination Centres in each district to speed up the immunization exercise.
He said the vaccines were under Emergency Use Authorisation and were not supposed to be administered by private individuals and therefore urged the public to report anyone selling or administering doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to any person at a fee for immediate arrest.
According to him, so far, the Police have arrested three persons for selling and administering the vaccines without authorisation.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye further disclosed that in the coming weeks, the GHS would take delivery of more vaccines from the COVAX Facility and the African Medicine Platform.
The government expects to administer 42 million doses of the vaccines to 20 million Ghanaians, with each adult taking two jabs, to create herd immunity for the population.
Story: Seth Ameyaw Danquah
