Confused Akufo Addo Gov’t Relaxes Travel Restrictions For Travellers Without Experimental COVI-19 Vaccines

In a rather inexplicable U-turn, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has been forced to backtrack on its earlier announcement that only COVID-19 vaccinated travellers will be allowed to leave or arrive in Ghana via the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).

On Wednesday, January 19, 2021, in a press conference that featured the Minister of Information, Kojo Opppng Nkrumah and the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, the GHS announced that the vaccine requirement for travellers has been scrapped.

The only restrictions would be to quarantine those who test Positive for COVID-19.

The motivation for the GHS’s decision is not clear and the fact that the announcement was made at the exact same time the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson announced similar sweeping relaxation of its draconian regulations against the unvaccinated, has further fuelled suspicions that Ghana is simply toeing the line of the West blindly.

Ghana had not had any serious adverse impact of COVID-19 since March 2020 when the first patients were detected. So far, only 1.300 people, mostly above 65 years old and with serious underlying health conditions had died in the past two years.

Comparatively, countries that have mulled the idea of imposing totalitarian restrictions on the unvaccinated had recorded hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths in the same period.

However, realising that the vaccines are in no way stopping the spread of infection of COVID-19 and that the vaccinated are currently increasingly being hospitalised and dying from COVID019, many of these that proposed restrictions on the unvaccinated are relaxing their draconian policies.

The U-turn of the GHS could also be because the National Communications Director of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi had dragged the government and the GHS to court to bar them from enforcing mandates on the failed vaccines.

Amongst the reliefs sought by Sammy Gyamfi, he wants the court to declare that attempts by the GHS to mandate the experimental COVID-19 vaccines were a contravention of medical ethics and best practices.

He also wants the court to declare that the impugned directives of the GHS contravene the guidelines of the World Health Organization regarding proof of COVID-19 vaccination for international travellers, and that same is unreasonable.

The COVID-19 vaccines which were rushed through with limited clinical studies under the guise of Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) have limited safety studies and long-term studies. Indeed, it is still undergoing Phase Three clinical trials until 2023 when proper data on its long-term side effect can be available.

In the meantime, the mass rollout of the vaccines undergoing clinical trials has proven a costly gamble as it has sparked serious adverse reactions and deadly diseases such as Myocarditis, an irreversible heart inflammation. It has also recorded strokes, thrombosis and several thousands of deaths worldwide.

Despite these threats of adverse reactions, the GHS had announced in late 2021 that it will mandate the vaccines across Ghana, sparking widespread public anger in sync with similar sentiments expressed globally.

Per its earlier plan, the GHS had required that persons aged 18 years and above, arriving in Ghana from December 12, 2021, were to provide proof of full vaccination.

Addressing pressmen on Wednesday, Director-General of GHS, Dr. Patrick Kumah-Aboagye explained that the directive has been reviewed to make it more lenient.