The Ghana Health Service (GHS) will meet with Pfizer vaccine makers later today [Monday, August 23, 2021] to finalize plans for the delivery of certain consignments to supplement Ghana’s immunization campaign.
The government previously said that around 1.2 million Pfizer vaccines are anticipated to arrive in the next days, and that cold chain storage facilities have been acquired to assist in their storage.
However, in an interview with Citi News, Dr. Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, Programmes Manager for the Extended Programme on Immunization at the Ghana Health Service, said that the Service has been informed about additional criteria that must be fulfilled before the vaccines can be given.
“We have been given emergency use approval and the other conditions are from the manufacturer and not from within. They have given us some conditions and we are doing them. So we are gradually preparing. We actually anticipated that we were going to get the Pfizer last month, but it turned out that information was coming from COVAX but the manufacturers had their own conditions.”
Meanwhile, the Service will begin deploying the 249,000 Astrazeneca vaccines acquired from the UK government later this week to remove the backlog of those who have yet to get their second doses.
“We are getting approximately 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines which is part of the consignment that is coming. As for our backlog, it will be cleared.”
Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Presidential Advisor on Health, has previously said that Ghana would soon get the first shipment of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines via the COVAX program.
Last Monday, Ghana completed the usage of 177,600 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
Only 405,971 people had got both doses of the AstraZeneca immunizations prior to the current round of vaccinations with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while 865,422 had received one dosage.
Ghana now has 6,647 active COVID-19 cases, up from 114,584 when the pandemic started.
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