By Rachel Kakraba
The Ghana Health Service is to scale up covid 19, vaccination to cover children 10 to 14 years. This will be part of a renewed vaccination drive to reach large numbers of the population.
Currently, the children who are 15 years of age and above are those who have been covered by the COVID-19 vaccination.
In an interview with GBCGHANAONLINE, Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye, said the move to increase head immunity is to ensure Ghanaian children remain protected from the COVID-19 virus.
“We are not vaccinating children below 16 and that accounts for about 25 to 30 percent of the population. So it’s very difficult to get head immunity but the higher the proportion the better. We are working towards trying to bring the age of the vaccination to about 10 so that we can rope in more people to be vaccinated to help us achieve that head immunity.”
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said schools are reopening at a time when infections are surging and asked parents and school management to always ensure students strictly adhere to COVID-19 safety protocols.
“School is reopening at a period when transmission is very high. We started vaccinating the kids in SHS where the age really falls. We’ve been able to do just about four hundred thousand, but I believe that there are nearly two million of them in the four or three classes.”
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye urged parents to ensure their children are vaccinated.
