Ghana’s fight against Covid-19 is expected to be given a boost with the arrival of over 6,410,960 doses of vaccines by the end of this year.
Pfizer vaccines will constitute 3,472,560 doses, more than half of the figure, while 1,756,800 will be Johnson with 1,181,600 doses being AstraZeneca vaccines to be supplied through the COVAX Facility, World Bank, Africa Union and government interventions.
According to the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the vaccination is expected to fully vaccinate 3.9 million Ghanaians.
Programme Manager at the Expanded Programme on Immunisation at the Service, Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano made the revelation at a training programme for journalists in Kumasi.
According to him, the country is expected to take delivery of 756,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine by the close of business on Tuesday.
“We still have some vaccines in the pipeline. We have almost 6,400 that we are waiting for before the end of the year and that’s quite a lot of vaccines. We are still expecting 3,400 million doses of Pfizer; so we will receive an additional 3,400 million. We are also expecting a combination of let’s say a total of 1,200 million doses of AstraZeneca which will go for 2nd dose and of course first doses as well.
We are also expecting 1,800 million doses of Johnson and Johnson; 756,000 will arrive tomorrow (Tuesday) evening. And the rest would be delivered to us around November.”
The announcement comes as GHS starts administration of Pfizer and Modena vaccines from November 1.
Ghana has as of October 21, 2021, administered 2, 842, 857 doses of Covid-19 vaccines against the targeted 20 million of the country’s population.
Out of the figure, only 829, 044, representing 4.1 per cent have been fully vaccinated against a whopping 2, 179, 880 who have received single doses.
According to Dr Amponsa-Achiano, all is set for phase 2 of the vaccine rollout.
“The next step is that we will continue with our phase 2. Our phase 2 is the general population of eligible people 18 and above. We also have started distributing the Moderna and the Pfizer. We will engage our stakeholders including the media constantly and of course, we will pursue additional vaccines because we need to cover the entire population.
Some of them (regions) are starting tomorrow. They will not start wholesale but in the middle of November, the whole country would have started all the remaining vaccines in terms of Pfizer and Moderna and of course other vaccines like AstraZeneca.”
Health journalists from nine regions in the country’s northern sector, including Ashanti and Oti regions are being trained on Covid-19 reportage and vaccine misconception.