GHS revises age of recipients of Pfizer vaccine to 15 years

Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director-General, Ghana Health Service (GHS), says the Food and Drugs Authority has revised the age of recipients qualified to receive the Pfizer vaccine to 15 years.

He said the revision of the ages from 18 and above to 15 years would help adolescents to be vaccinated to reduce school outbreaks of COVID-19, especially for Senior High School students and reduce the transmission of the disease to adults at home.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye said this at the CHPS Database Dissemination Forum organised as part of efforts aimed at strengthening Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) implementation under its Technical Cooperation Project, ‘CHPS for Life Project’ to accelerate the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

He said the country originally registered the ages of 18 and above as qualified recipients of the Pfizer vaccines, whereas the United States of America registered Pfizer for 12 years and above.

The Director-General said the adolescents were the most active group in the society and as expected, they would be moving about more during the upcoming festive season and since COVID-19 was about the movement it was important to get them vaccinated.

He said it would also help the country have proper herd immunity when they were added to the total population of those to be vaccinated.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye stated that they were engaging major stakeholders, including the Ghana Education Service on the modalities on how the vaccination of the adolescents would be carried out.

‘‘We have the consent issues like the adults’ but this is a risk for all of us and I believe that this something we can all get above and be able to vaccinate as many people to protect us all,’’ he said.

He said adolescents who were out of school and within the age group would also be vaccinated.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye said there were some Pfizer vaccines in the country and they were expecting more Pfizer from Covax and other places as well.