ACCRA - The World Health Organization’s global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX delivered its first COVID-19 shots on Wednesday, as the race to inoculate the world’s poorest people and tame the pandemic accelerates.
Local representatives of the WHO and the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF described the vaccines’ arrival as a “momentous” step. The shots, part of an initial tranche for low and middle-income countries, will be used by Ghana to start a vaccination drive from March 2 that will prioritise frontline health workers and others at high risk.
Coronavirus infections have soared in Ghana to over 81,200, and 584 people have died, with nearly as many dying in the first two months of this year as in the whole of 2020, health ministry data showed.“There are a lot of frontline workers who are self-isolating because they have been exposed and got infected,” Emmanuel Addipa-Adapoe, a medical officer at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, said. “Receiving the vaccine will be like arming them for the task ahead.
China has donated small batches of its Sinopharm vaccine to countries including Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea. And Russia has offered to supply 300 million doses of its Sputnik V vaccine to the AU scheme along with a financing package.On Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged wealthy nations to share vaccine doses with COVAX, saying the goal of equitable distribution was “in jeopardy”.
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