• Among them, the highest consignments have been the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine
• Other vaccines have been approved for use in the country
Ghana, like the rest of the world, has been chasing after vaccines from wherever it can get them, to help in its fight against the novel coronavirus.
February 24, 2021, was historic for the country because it was the day the country became the first in the world to receive the first set of vaccines from the COVAX facility.
On that day, Ghana took stock of 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Vaccines, following which other consignments were received in the country thereafter.
So far, the country has received other vaccines from manufacturing facilities and countries in the world.
It must be noted that for all the vaccines that the country has procured so far, none of them is a single-dose vaccine, as is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
But, which specific vaccines have been approved for use so far in Ghana? Here they are:
- AstraZeneca
The most widely used vaccine in Ghana so far has been the AstraZeneca. It was the first vaccine to be received in the country and continues to most used in the country.
With an estimated 1.26 million doses of vaccines given so far, with 397,000 being full doses, the country has so far administered a total of 852,042 single doses of this vaccine while the number of persons who have received full doses stands at 380,829.
In the wake of the Delta variant of the virus, there were reports that the efficacy of the AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines against it were not strong enough but this is a claim that the government refuted.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, described the assertions as untrue in a statement copied to GhanaWeb, stating that the claims were not backed by data.
“According to Public Health England (PHE), two doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are highly effective against hospitalization due to the Delta variant and showed no deaths among those vaccinated.
"A study conducted by Gamaleya Centre suggests that Sputnik-V is more efficient against the Delta variant of coronavirus first detected in India, compared to other COVID-19 vaccines,” the statement read in parts.
The statement further statement noted that data available to the GHS “suggest that the AstraZeneca vaccine is effective against symptomatic disease caused by the Delta variant.”
- Johnson & Johnson
- Moderna
- Pfizer
- Sputnik V
The Pfizer vaccine is among those approved to be used in the country