By Yvonne Atilego.
Government has announced additional measures to control the spread of Covid-19 ahead of the Christmas festivities. The measures focused on securing Ghana’s ports, especially the Kotoka International Airport, by scaling up surveillance in the wake of a possible fourth wave in Europe and South Africa.
This is to ensure that Covid infections do not increase especially among international travels. Some European countries have imposed stricter COVID-19 measures amid a fourth wave that has intensified vaccination efforts. In the past week, a heavily mutated COVID variant had been identified, named; Omicron, and labeled a “variant of concern” by the WHO. The new variant has been detected in some countries including the United Kingdom. Since its detection, several nations including the United States and the UK have banned travel from South Africa and surrounding countries.
Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kumah-Aboagye, at a news briefing said the mistakes that were made in December 2020, which occasioned the escalation of infections in January this year, will not be repeated.
”Arrangements will be made with religious organizations and other stakeholders to ensure that activities done during Christmas are in accordance with Covid 19 protocols”, Dr. Kumah-Aboagye announced.
December is Vaccination Month.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has declared the month of December vaccination month.
In line with this, GHS is scaling up vaccination by doubling its teams and using various locations to get more people vaccinated. It will also continue to generate demand for vaccinations through the media as it has a critical role to play in this endeavour. This is part of the government’s agenda to get a larger portion of the population immune to the virus.
Director-General of the Service Dr Patrick Kumah-Aboagye at a news briefing in Accra stressed that vaccination is the surest way to deal with the virus.
In a related development, the Country Representative for WHO Ghana, Dr. Francis Kasolo says people’s inability to vaccinate will pose risk to gains made so far.
”The new variant recorded in some countries should be a wakeup call for persons who are yet to get vaccinated to do so”, he posited.
