Coronavirus: Ghana takes delivery of 350,000 vaccines from DRC

Ghana will take stock of 350,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to aid in its fight against the novel coronavirus.

The vaccine which was originally meant for the Democratic Republic of Congo was redirected to Ghana after the country served to notice it may be unable to dispense most of its 1.7 million doses with an expiry date due on Thursday, June 24.

The rest of the vaccines were redistributed to other African countries.

The vaccines were procured under the COVAX facility.

On Friday, May 7, the 350,000 doses arrived at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) via a Turkish Airline to augment Ghana’s depleting stock of vaccines, Today.ng reports.

According to the Ghana Health Service (GHS), 849,527 vaccines have been administered as at Friday, April 30 with a total of 966,850 received under various partnerships.

The country’s target is to vaccinate 20 million of its population at the end of the year, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said on CNN last Monday.

But he is equally worried about the delay in getting more vaccines.

“We have vaccinated nearly a million people,” he said on Zain’s Exchange on CNN. “Our target is to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of the year and the 20 million mean effectively vaccinating the entire adult population of the country.

“We are a country of some 30 million and if we are able to vaccinate some 20 million people by end of year, it would have meant that we had vaccinated the adult population.

“The delays in getting the vaccine of course have been a little troublesome.”

The latest consignment will come as a relief to the country.

Ghana was the first country in the world to take delivery of 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines from the Serum Institute of India under the COVAX facility.

Those were received in February ahead of a mass vaccination in March.

The virus has so far killed 783 persons with 1,583 patients battling with the disease currently.