Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) is making plans to introduce an app to facilitate the nationwide rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Director General of the GHS, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, who disclosed this during the Covid-19 press briefing yesterday, said, “We are currently going to adapt a locally developed app which will allow us to be able to schedule and do pre-registration before you go and vaccinate. You can book appointments.”
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye explained further that the app would have special features that would give timely information on the number of people being vaccinated and other data that would help with decision-making in future.
“It will generate your Covid-19 passport for you, so we know all those who are getting the vaccine and the database will be in Ghana. Whatever the world decides on Covid-19, we will have a database locally to be able to respond appropriately, including checking if persons who have had positive tests have had vaccinations or not,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye added.
The introduction of the new app will be the second to be deployed in the country’s fight against Covid-19 as the GHS is currently using the Covid-19 tracker app to help in tracing people who have come into contact with infected persons.
The app, through the common platform of mobile networks, is able to trace contacts of persons infected by the virus, show where they have been in recent time through various telephone-related data, and link such people to health professionals for urgent action to be taken.
Vaccination
On March 2, Ghana began the rollout of the 600,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine received through the COVAX Facility.
According to the GHS, about 220,252 individuals who fall within the eligible groups in the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Central regions have been vaccinated in the first week of the exercise.
“Greater Accra alone has vaccinated 128,088 but they have about 58,000 vaccinated persons yet to be entered into the database,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye explained.
The Greater Kumasi area has seen 69,325 persons vaccinated.
Ghana recently received additional 50,000 doses as a donation from the Indian government and was expected to take delivery of another two million AstraZeneca vaccines by the end of May, also from the COVAX Facility.
New Covid-19 Cases Decline
Meanwhile, the GHS has started recording a steady decline in the number of new Covid-19 cases
The downward trend, according to Dr. Kuma-Aboagye, is as a result of the reduction in the number of active cases being recorded in health facilities.
He said active Covid-19 cases in Ghana had declined from 8,000 to less than 5,000 over the past four weeks; adding that daily reported cases had declined from 800 to about 400 over the past four weeks.
According to him, “daily admissions have declined from 270 to about 150 cases in Greater Accra Region.’
He said as of March 5, a total of 86,737 cases had been confirmed with about 81,299 discharges and 656 deaths recorded.
He said a total of 4,782 active Covid-19 cases were being managed out of which 177 cases were being managed in health facilities.
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said all 16 regions, 252 districts, in the country had reported Covid-19 cases.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri