Ghana’s attempt to procure more COVID-19 vaccines hampered by global challenges - Health Minister

The sector minister in an interview with Citi News opined that the government's effort to secure more of the coronavirus vaccines are being hampered by very high global demand.

“We are having challenges in supplies just like across the globe. There are those who have money invested in the development, and they are keeping on to the stocks.”

“Last week if you heard, Italy blocked consignments that were bound for Australia. Stocks are just not available, but we are working with networks and the president is also helping us with this,” he noted.

Mr. Agyeman Manu, however, assured that the country is doing everything possible to get more of the vaccines despite the challenges.

Ghana is one of the countries which benefited from distribution of the COVAX vaccine from the global vaccine initiative.

The West African country took delivery of 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India on February 24.

This was followed by a donation of 50,000 vaccines from the Indian government.

The government of Ghana is expected to take delivery of 2 million AstraZeneca vaccines by the end of May also from the COVAX facility.

COVAX hopes to deliver at least 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of 2021 to ease procurement challenges and ensure equitable distribution of the vaccine.

Concerns with hoarding of the vaccine have been ever-present since the development of vaccines begun.