COVID-19 Vaccine: App to be developed to aid rollout – GHS

The government plans to roll out an app to aid Ghana’s vaccine rollout.

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said the app was being sourced locally.

“We are currently going to adapt a locally developed app which will allow us to be able to schedule and do preregistration before you go and vaccinate. You can book appointments,” he said at a press conference on Monday.

He added that “it will generate your COVID-19 passport for you, so we know all see those who are getting the vaccine and the database will be in Ghana,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye added.

The Ghana Health Service expects the data collected by the app to help with decision-making in the future.

“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 said.

Ghana already has a COVID-19 tracker app which was to help in tracing people who have come into contact with infected persons.

The COVID-19 Tracker 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.

Ghana began the vaccine rollout on March 2 and has so far had 650,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine at its disposal.

Ghana received 600,000 doses from the COVAX facility and 50,000 doses as a donation from the Indian government.

The government expects to take delivery of 2 million AstraZeneca vaccines by the end of May, also from the COVAX facility.

So far, 220,252 are on record as having been vaccinated.