Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the minister of health has announced that government will receive the first batch of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines in August this year from the Africa Medicines Platform.
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has already approved the vaccine for use in Ghana.
Addressing the media in Accra on Wednesday 16 June, Agyeman-Manu said the exact date for the arrival of the vaccines is not yet clear.
“We have indications that our first batch of vaccines to come from the AU supported procurement will begin to arrive in this country sometime in August. We are still waiting for the exact date,” he said.
Agyeman-Manu also revealed that government would in the middle of July receive more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines from the UK and USA.
“The government is also making frantic efforts to procure more vaccines to complete the second jabs for those who have not received them, and to continue the mass vaccination of the 20 million people targeted. So, there is hope for those who have not received their jabs. Be assured,” the health minister said.
Local vaccine production
Meanwhile, the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has said his administration is keen on supporting industry players to develop COVID-19 vaccines locally, as part of efforts to vaccinate the entire adult population in Ghana.
Ghana recorded its first COVID-19 infection in March 2020 after the novel coronavirus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.
Launching Ghana’s financing road map for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the first such road map to be produced in Africa in Accra, Akufo-Addo said recent scramble for vaccines by African countries to fight the COVID-19 pandemic is a clear indication that the continent and for that matter Ghana, must take the bull by the horn and produce its own vaccines.
COVID-19 vaccine reality
Akufo-Addo said Ghana has “so far through the Covax facility”, received some “one million, two hundred doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which has enabled us to vaccinate completely some 350,000 people and some 850,000 have received their first dose.”
“Unfortunately, we are the victims of this worldwide shortage of vaccines especially the poorer, less advantaged nations. It has provided us a very important lesson, among the many lessons that the COVID-19 has revealed to us, the need for self reliance in future in these areas” President Akufo-Addo stated.
“We cannot continue to be dependent on alms and on charity of foreigners and foreign tax payers for our basic sustainability. We need to be able to put in place the structures that will enable us in the future not to be caught with our pants down and that is we have to learn and find the avenue to produce our own vaccines and I am particularly keen on providing the assistance for the institutions of our country to do so,” Akufo-Addo added.
Fred Dzakpata
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