The Ghana Health Service (GHS) says from December 2021 to January 2022, persons entering nightclubs, beaches, restaurants, and sports stadia must be vaccinated against Covid-19 before are allowed entry.

The directive has become necessary because of an anticipated increase in international arrivals and possible mass gathering and in-country activities that are likely to result in an uptick of Covid-19 cases during the Christmas holidays.

To this end, the GHS said it would scale-up mass vaccination at lorry parks, markets, churches, mosques, and sports stadia in December in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.

The group of persons to be vaccinated during the period include all government workers, security personnel, health workers, staff and students at secondary and tertiary education institutions, commercial drivers and their mates, as well as staff of the three Arms of Government.

Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General of the GHS, announced this at a media briefing in Accra.

He said the Service would reinforce the monitoring and enforcement of existing COVID-19 protocols in collaboration with the security agencies nationwide.

Ghana had not recorded the new Covid-19 variant called Omicron, which is heavily mutated, but would conduct more genome sequencing to determine whether there were cases in the country, he said.

Data from the Ghana Infectious Disease Centre revealed that 87 per cent of unvaccinated persons are likely to suffer severe or critical ailment from Covid-19 and seven times more likely to die from the virus.

Touching on the GHS' strategy for the Upcoming Christmas, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the Service would reinforce response mechanisms to the anticipated surge in Covid-19 infections, strengthen contact tracing and follow-ups, as well as improve risk communication and provision of more reagents for testing.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye said 12.5 million vaccines out of the 20 million targeted this year had been received with 5.4 million people vaccinated.

There were 5,469,470 AstraZeneca vaccines administered representing 45.6 percent, Johnson and Johnson Vaccine; 186,150, representing 19.4 percent, Moderna was 719,838, constituting 10.0 percent, Pfizer; 725,562 (24.9 percent), and Sputnik V; 21,000 (0.2 percent).

Ghana has, so far, recorded 131,082 positive cases of COVID-19 with 1.9 million tests conducted.

There are currently 713 active cases, 129,149 recoveries, 22 severe cases, and 1,220 deaths.