Programme Manager of the Extended Programme on Immunization (EPI), Dr. Kwame Amponsah-Akyianu has assured Ghanaians who are yet to receive their second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines that the vaccines will soon be rolled out despite the delay.
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The Programme Manager revealed that the EPI is constantly working on the procurement of the second doses of the vaccine.
In an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, he said: “We have planned for the second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines and we are still working on them”.
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He added that even though the vaccines may have delayed considering the time frame given, “technically and scientifically”, the vaccines had not delayed.
“If you have the first dose, you may get some form of immunity as already announced and then overtime the immunity goes down but it doesn’t go to zero. We said we were going to give the second dose around 3 months or soon after but we can say for now we’ve done four months for most people so it has passed the recommended time but technically and scientifically we won’t say time has elapsed”, he explained.
Ghana became the first country globally to receive a vaccine shipment from the COVAX facility when 600,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine doses were delivered in February 2021.
The country also received a total of about 360,000 doses from India and telecom giant MTN as donations. Months after, the country is still awaiting some second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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Meanwhile, government has procured over 177,600 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) initiative for the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
The vaccines arrived at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) on Saturday, August 7.
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The deputy minister for Health, Tina Mensah, led the delegation to receive the vaccines.