President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has expressed enormous satisfaction as Ghana becomes the first county in the world to be recipients of vaccines from the COVAX Facility.
This comes after the arrival of Ghana’s first batch of the coronavirus on Wednesday, 24th February, 2021, where 600,000 AstraZeneca vaccines were received at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra.
He revealed that “the AstraZeneca vaccine is one of two (2) vaccines that have,so far,been approved and declared as safe-for-use by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA). With the process of certification currently ongoing for the other vaccines, the range of vaccines available to us will increase. This will facilitate our ability to reach our target of vaccinating twenty million Ghanaians by the end of this year.”
In appreciation, he applauds the efforts of the members of the COVID-19 Taskforce, and the officials of the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service for this commendable feat.
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FOLLOW-UP
According to Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Presidential Advisor on Health, Ghana is expected to receive its second batch of the coronavirus vaccine within the next 14 days.
Speaking on February 27, 2021, Dr. Nsiah-Asare said that the government is buying vaccines through direct sources, with an aim at getting the required numbers it needs to serve the entire Ghanaian populace.
“The ones which will be coming in a week or two may be a combination of what government is buying directly and what we have from COVAX so it will be coming in combinations. Government is buying majority of the vaccines. We’re at a very advanced stage to get the ones government is buying as well as the one coming from the COVAX facility
“Vaccines from different manufacturers are at different costs. The Ghana government wants to buy directly, as much as possible, from the source, so that we are not going to use a lot of middle men who will put prices here and there all sorts of things. So, we’ll get the vaccines at the right cost especially using the African medicine supply platform, they know the costs and even trying to beat the cost from the manufacturers down a bit,” he said.
