Ghana will by mid-August receive millions of COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility to ramp up the availability of vaccines, to inoculate all adult population of the country by the end of 2021.
About one million Pfizer vaccines from the United States of America, 229,670 Pfizer vaccines from the African Union, and 249,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from the United Kingdom are expected to arrive in the country in the third quarter.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo, in a televised update to the nation on measures taken against the spread of coronavirus in the country said, government was also procuring 17 million single dose per person of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines, through the African Medicine Supply Platform, in the third quarter.
He said the nation had consequently upgraded its national, regional and district cold chain facilities in order to widen access to vaccines like Pfizer and Modena that required minus seventy degrees celsius cold chains.
“These include 16 ultra-low cold freezers, 58 units of ultra-low freezers, 50 normal vaccine refrigerators, 300 boxes to be filled with ice packs, 300 ice packed freezers, 10 cold chain vans, and 120 temperature monitoring devices,” he said.
The President stressed that all the vaccines to be used in the country had been certified as safe-for-use by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and urged locals who were yet to be vaccinated not to be hesitant in taking their jab, when the vaccine arrived.
President Akufo-Addo Addo reiterated the Government’s commitment to vaccinate 20 million Ghanaians by the end of the year in spite of the huge global demand for vaccines. So far, in Ghana, 1,271,393 vaccine doses have been administered, out of which 865,422 persons have received a single jab, and 405,971 persons, full doses.
GNA