President Akufo-Addo has assured that his government is committed to vaccinating the entire twenty million adult Ghanaians.
The President said the entire adult population by the end of the year will get the jabs despite the huge global demand for vaccines.
Speaking at his 26th COVID-19 update, measures taken to combat the virus, the President noted that so far one million, two hundred and seventy-one thousand, three hundred and ninety-three (1,271,393) vaccine doses have been administered, with eight hundred and sixty-five thousand, four hundred and twenty-two (865,422) persons having received a single jab, and four hundred and five thousand, nine hundred and seventy-one (405,971) persons have received their full dose of two (2) jabs.
He said “Indications are that, in the third quarter of this year, the availability of vaccines for our country will ramp up. We are expecting, through the COVAX facility, one million Pfizer vaccines from the United States of America, two hundred and twenty-nine thousand, six hundred and seventy (229,670) Pfizer vaccines from the African Union, and two hundred and forty-nine thousand (249,000) AstraZeneca vaccines from the United Kingdom. Government is also in the process of procuring seventeen million (17 million) single dose per person Johnson & Johnson vaccines, through the African Medicine Supply Platform, in this quarter”.
Touching on the readiness of the health facilities and how the government is equipping them, the President said “We have, as such, upgraded our national, regional and district cold chain facilities to widen our access to vaccines like Pfizer and Modena, that require minus seventy degrees Celsius (-70℃) cold chains. These include sixteen (16) ultra-low cold freezers, fifty-eight (58) units of ultra-low freezers, fifty (50) normal vaccine refrigerators, three hundred (300) boxes to be filled with ice packs, three hundred (300) ice packed freezers, ten (10) cold chain vans, and one hundred and twenty (120) temperature monitoring devices. I thank, in particular, UPS, the American multi-national shipping, receiving and supply chain management company, for their generous donation towards this development”.
He assured again that all the vaccines to be used in the country have been certified as safe-for-use by the national regulatory agency, the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).
“…there should, therefore, be no hesitancy amongst the population who are yet to be vaccinated. As the oft-cited saying goes, it is better to be safe than sorry”.
He, however, noted with a conventional assurance that the government’s overreaching goal at the end of the day is for the country to have zero active cases.
Source:A1radioonline.com/101.1 MHz/Moses Apiah/Ghana
