COVID-19: Sixth national vaccination campaign begins Jan. 20

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) will from today Friday January 20 to Tuesday January 24 begin the sixth round of the National COVID-19 Vaccination Days (NaCVaDs) campaign to increase uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The campaign is targeted at administering 1.4 million doses of vaccines to unvaccinated persons in all parts of the country.

Pregnant women and all persons aged 15 years and above are eligible to receive the jab.

Dr Patrick Kuma Aboagye, Director General of the Ghana Health Service, who launched the campaign in Accra on Thursday said the move was to bring the country closer to the attainment of herd immunity.

During the campaign period, approximately 6000 vaccination teams will be deployed across the length and breadth of the country, employing both static and close-to-client strategies to reach the unreached.

Vaccinations will be done in all government hospitals across the country, schools, marketplaces, churches, mosque and in homes.

Dr Aboagye said during the last four NVD campaign series, the dynamics of vaccine distribution and level of vaccination became positively correlated with total vaccine receipts, saying “as vaccine receipt quantities increased, vaccine distribution and level of vaccinations increased commensurately”.

He said during the first campaign in December 2021, a total of 2.9 million doses were administered after l, which the total monthly administered doses dipped to as low as 671 thousand in March 2022.

“The second, third and fourth series of the campaign days have yielded positive results, moving the total number of administered doses from 13.8 million doses as of end of April 2022 to some 21 million doses at the end of November 2022,” he said.

The Director General said currently, about 22 million vaccine doses had been administered, out of the number, over 12 million people in Ghana had received at least a dose of the vaccine and nine million fully immunised.

He called on eligible persons who were yet to vaccinate to get vaccinated now.

“Vaccination remains the most effective way of protection against the COVID-19 disease, the vaccines are safe, effective and free, prevent severe illnesses, hospitalisation and death,” he said.

Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, Programme Manager, Expanded Programme on Immunisation, GHS, said vaccination was now the mainstay of COVID-19 prevention.

“The National COVID-19 Vaccination Campaigns have shown to be an additional key strategy that gets a lot of persons vaccinated within a short time, four of such campaigns have been completed with impressive results,” he said.

He emphasised that COVID-19 vaccines could and protected most people from hospitalisation and death, which was why as many doses needed to be administered around the world as rapidly, and equitably, as possible.

Dr Amponsa-Achiano said misinformation, disinformation and pockets of hesitancy had been a major challenge in getting more persons vaccinated, especially in the southern parts of the country.

Mr. Fiachra McAsey, UNICEF Representative in Ghana, stressed the need for Ghana to remain vigilant towards the virus as new strains continued to emerge.

He encouraged all to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their loved ones because COVID-19 was not gone.