Coronavirus vaccine: Second dose rollout starts May 19

Ghana will start administering the second dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from Wednesday, 19 May 2021.

Beneficiaries of the second rollout exercise will be the segmented groups who received their first doses in March.

The exercise will cover frontline health workers, adults of 60 years and above, frontline government officials, media practitioners, frontline workers in the formal sector and persons with underlying health conditions in 43 selected districts across the country.

Ghana received 350,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the Kotoka International Airport from the Democratic Republic of Congo under the Covax facility on Friday, 7 May 2021.

Some 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine were initially received on 24 February 2021.

Following the procurement of the first batch of vaccines, the country, on Tuesday, 2 March 2021, 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.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s active COVID-19 caseload has reduced to 1,531.

Of that number, there are six critical, 23 severe cases.

Some 60 new cases have also been confirmed recently.

A total of 783 people have died since the virus entered Ghana in mid-March 2020.

Since that time, a total of 93,011 have been recorded up to date with 90,697 of them having recovered.

Regional breakdown:

Greater Accra Region - 51,222

Ashanti Region - 15,539

Western Region - 5,856

Eastern Region - 4,185

Central Region - 3,443

Volta Region - 2,469

Northern Region - 1,654

Bono East Region - 1,433

Bono Region - 1,398

Upper East Region - 1,319

Western North Region - 874

Ahafo Region - 714

Upper West Region - 499

Oti Region - 424

North East Region - 228

Savannah Region - 123