A total of 18.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered across the country as at last Wednesday, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said.

Out of the number, 10,388,553 AstraZeneca vaccines have been administered while 18,368 doses of Sputnik-V have been administered.

It said 1,065,357 doses of the Moderna vaccines, 4,430,168 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have been administered while 2,656,440 doses of the COVID-19 Janssen vaccines have been administered.

The service said8,026,497 persons have so far been fully vaccinated out of the 22.9 million people targeted, making up a percentage of 35.1.

The number of persons receiving "AT LEAST" one dose is 11,165,885 representing 48.8 per cent.

A total of 1,598,590 people have also been said to have received the first booster dose.

Ghana experienced a surge in infections and fatalities in January 2021, entering a second wave of rising infections of COVID-19. The number of daily active cases in February 2021 was as high as the peak of the first wave in June 2020.

Furthermore, Ghana was also confirmed to have recorded the COVID-19 variant, which first appeared in South Africa.

Hence, government rolled out the vaccination exercise to help save lives in the country in March, 2021.

This has however received low patronage by Ghanaians partly due to the belief in herbal medicine, inadequate information about COVID-19 and people being oblivious of the vaccination benefits.

For this reason, the Service has called on all and sundry to get vaccinated along with ensuring a strict observance of the safety precautions to help control the pandemic and slow the development of new variants.

The GHS has also urged the general populace to be more cautious particularly with the outbreak of the Marburg virus disease, influenza and monkey pox in the country.