Coronavirus: 2 million more doses of AstraZeneca vaccine in by May

Ghana is expected to take delivery of two million more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from the COVAX programme before May, after being the first recipient on the African continent, of 600,000 doses a few weeks earlier, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye had said.

“We are expecting that between now and probably in May, we are expecting about two more million AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facilities”, Dr Kuma-Aboagye told journalists at a press briefing at the Peduase Lodge, on the ongoing national vaccination exercise, adding that they will focus on “all health workers in the country to ensure that they are also safe and they are able to render services.”

He also noted that Ghanaians will soon have to book their COVID-19 vaccination appointments with health posts using a locally-developed app for that purpose.

"We are currently going to adapt a locally-developed app, which will allow us to be able to do scheduling”, adding: “We can do a pre-registration before you go and vaccinate”.

“We can do appointment system for you to go and vaccinate, to know where to go and vaccinate”, he said.

Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the app “will generate your COVID passport for you, so, we know all those who have vaccinated, and the database will be in Ghana and whatever the world decides, we will have enough database locally, to be able to respond appropriately and learn from how, including checking those who have had positive –resutls], whether they have had vaccination or not," Dr Kuma-Aboagye

So far, some 220,252 Ghanaians have been vaccinated within a week.

“Greater Accra alone has vaccinated 128,088 but they have about 58,000 vaccinated yet to be entered [into the database]” Dr Kuma-Aboagye noted.

So far, 69,325 persons have been vaccinated in the Greater Kumasi area.

Saturday, 6 March 2021 saw the highest number of single-day vaccinations – 46,780 persons.