Communications Officer for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has asked two important questions about COVID-19 vaccinations in the country as government contemplates mandatory vaccination.
He stated that if the vaccine doesn’t stop people from getting infected, hospitalised and from COVID-related deaths, then why should a law be passed to make vaccination mandatory for people?
"At first we were told that no vaccine has a 100 per cent efficacy rate so no vaccine can prevent the absolute transmission of the disease but they can reduce the rate of infections. But then, we realized that breakthrough infections were also increasing. Later we were also told that we can still contract the virus even after we have been vaccinated but the risk of hospitalization will be low. So why should the hospitalization and death numbers increase," he said.
Speaking on Good Morning Ghana on Thursday, December 2, 2021, the private legal practitioner said that in his perspective, there is something legally wrong with the act of compelling people to take a medication.
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"If it is all about the education and sensitisation campaign that people are engaged in then I think that it is beautiful. It then becomes a matter of choice but when you go and tell a person whose natural immunity has kept him from being infected in the first place that by law you have to take a vaccine whiles it won’t stop you from being infected, hospitalized and getting killed by the virus," he said.
The NDC Communications Officer also asked that if the government is going to force people to take a vaccine, then will indemnities given to the manufacturers of vaccines be removed?
Sammy Gyamfi indicated that the COVID vaccines are mostly supplied to countries that have given manufacturers indemnifications so if the government is planning to make vaccinations compulsory then they have to also plan to give people the right to sue vaccine manufacturers for any adverse effects.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) on Sunday, November 21, 2021, discovered the COVID-19 Omicron variant at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in a Nigerian traveller.
It was however said the variant has not yet been discovered within the community.
This was announced by the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, during a presentation at the launch of Ghana’s Covid-19 vaccination month which started on Wednesday, December 1, 2021.