The Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, has asked all West African leaders to do all they can to get their citizens vaccinated COVID-19.

President Akufo-Addo maintained that West Africa will be safe if the majority of its citizens are vaccinated.

He made these comments on Thursday, May 27, 2021, when he addressed the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja, Nigeria.

President Akufo Addo insists that is the surest way the pandemic can be defeated.

“We must continue to encourage our populations regardless of their sensibilities to respect the protective measures and get vaccinated so we can guarantee a rapid return to normalcy.”

What is the vaccination story in Ghana?

Ghana’s mass vaccination against the coronavirus begun on March 2, 2021, with the deployment of 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines which were manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.

In addition to the COVAX support, Ghana received 50,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from the Indian government and 165,000 from MTN.

Ghana has so far vaccinated over a million of its population against the virus, according to the Ghana Health Service (GHS).

Currently, there is a second phase vaccination ongoing in the country with 350,000 additional vaccines from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to the GHS, it has vaccinated more than 82 percent of its target for the second phase of the vaccination exercise for persons who took the first jab.

It is thus confident that it will meet the full target before the exercise ends.