Information reaching THE CUSTODIAN indicates a total number of 284,377 doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to people in the northern region between March to 20th December, 2021, representing 4.9% of the vaccinated population .
However, the Ghana Health Service target to vaccinate about 1,263,420 people representing 63.01% of out 2,005,431 people in the region.
The Deputy Northern Regional Director of Ghana Health Service in charge of Public Health, Dr Hilarius A.K Abiwu at a media interaction told Journalists on Wednesday (December 22, 2021) that the region for 2021 has recorded about 1,205 active cases of Covid-19.
He revealed the region in 2020 recorded an active case count of 569 and this therefore means a total of 1,774 positive cases has been recorded in the area since the outbreak of the pandemic in Ghana.
“Out of this number, we recorded 14 deaths last year. This year, we’ve had about 17 deaths, so in all from the beginning till now we have lost about 31 people to Covid-19” he lamented.
Nevertheless, Dr Hilarius Abiwu added the rest of the cases recovered without any major events, stating, “As at today, we don’t have any active case of Covid-19 on record in the northern region. Generally, the Covid-19 situation has slowed down in the run-up to December and we observed a similar thing also in 2020 around October, November and towards the middle of December – we virtually did not record any case; we had those months passing with us not recording positive cases.”
However, the Deputy Director asserted there was a major upsurge in the first quarter of 2021 shortly after the region had not had any positive case in the previous few months, emphasizing so much so that in the third month of 2021, the case count bypassed the figure recorded in the whole of 2020.
“Which means that the low active cases we are observing within this period does not mean that we wouldn’t have a rebound situation early into next year and that is why we need to do all that we can to make sure we don’t get into the situation that we had in the early part of this year” he admonished.
According to Dr Hilarius Abiwu, the Ghana Health Service this year has deployed a number of Covid-19 vaccines approved by the Ghana Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) as part of its vaccination plan.
He disclosed the GHS deployed the Astrazeneca vaccine very early in the year, followed by some doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines and now some doses of Moderna and also some quantities of Pfizer vaccines allocated to the regions in the past few months to end of the year.
“And very recently, we’ve had the go ahead with very significant number of quantities of Johnson & Johnson that we’re hoping to rollout massively within the Christmas and new year period” he stated.
