The Deputy Programme Manager of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) at the Ghana Health Service John Frederick Dadzie says Ghanaians who refuse to take the COVID vaccine will become a health hazard to themselves and their families.

“If you don’t take the vaccine you become a problem to yourself and your community, and you become a health hazard to yourself and to your family. Let’s all go out and take it so we protect ourselves from this virus,” he told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Thursday.

It comes in the wake of concerns over the vaccines by some Ghanaians. Some have expressed fears of possible adverse reaction if they took the vaccine.

Ghana on Wednesday received an initial tranche of deliveries of the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine at the Kotoka International Airport.

The first shipment of the COVID-19 vaccines from Covax, a World Health Organization-backed effort to procure and distribute inoculations for free to poor countries.

“These 600,000 Covax vaccines are part of an initial tranche of deliveries of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine licensed to the Serum Institute of India, which represent part of the first wave of Covid vaccines headed to several low and middle-income countries,” said UNICEF, which organised the shipment from Mumbai, in a joint statement with the WHO.

Health workers, people with underlying health conditions, frontline executive, legislature, judiciary, and some religious leaders are among the first category of people who will receive the newly arrived Covid-19 vaccine.

A statement by the Information Minister-designate, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah stated that Ghana is to begin the Covid-19 vaccination on March 2.