All passengers arriving at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) will be required to provide proof of full vaccination against COVID-19.

This is according to the reviewed COVID-19 protocols at the KIA ahead of the festive season.

Persons 18 years of age and older, both non-Ghanaians and Ghanaians, will be required to show proof of full vaccination on arrival in Ghana.

Speaking at a press conference, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Patrick Kuma Aboagye, noted that people will be coming into the country during the Yuletide; thus, the country needs to be on alert.

He said, "People in other countries who normally travel to this country are also experiencing numerical surges. The risks we face with Christmas are on.

"Gatherings, our practices, the fact that we are going to have a lot of people come to the country, yes, of course, there is also the potential for a new variant just like we had toward last Christmas when we had the 'Omicron variant'. So, we also have to look at that as a risk factor, so we need to be alert."

The GHS Director-General also called on Ghanaians to help sustain the improvements made with regard to fighting COVID-19 in the country.

He noted: "We need to make sure that we sustain the gains made so far so that we don't go back to where we were many months ago. I talked about some countries; we selected those countries because we tend to get the signal number of visitors from those places, especially during Christmas."

He cited countries like Japan and China, among others, whose COVID-19 cases have been on the surge and stressed that Ghana is at risk since there will be visitors coming in from such countries.

"You can see that in the last 28 days, Japan has recorded about 3.2 million cases, the US 1.57 cases, France 1.49 cases, China almost a million, Italy 0.85 cases and Germany.

"So, like I said, these are places where we also get a significant number of visitors, so that poses a risk for us," the GHS Director-General stated.