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Ghana is likely to get its next set of vaccines in August - Health Minister

The Minister of Health, Kwaku Manu Agyeman has disclosed that Ghana will likely get its next set of COVID-19 vaccines in August.

Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Health Minister-designate

According to the Minister, all the procurements the country has made will likely arrive from August.

In an interview on Accra based Citi FM, he admitted to the challenges Ghana is facing to procure vaccines.

“We are waiting for vaccines. The agreements I signed, if they give me an indication that tomorrow morning come to the airport and collect your vaccines, we will go. Other than that, the earlier time we have an indication to get vaccines would be in August.”

He also indicated the government is still aggressive on its quest to manufacture vaccines locally, adding that some companies have shown commitment to that course.

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“We have factories that were preparing themselves to produce vaccines and they have sent proposals to the government’s committee on the COVID-19 response team and things are progressing. If anything at all, in the very immediate future, we may be doing finishing and packing before we develop our own, and I think we have scientists who are ready to support us.”

The Ministry of Health has been under intense scrutiny in the past few days for its use of intermediaries in the purchase of the Sputnik V vaccines.

However, the Minister justified the process by saying due to the scarcity of the vaccines, the country has no option than to go that route.

“I had an obligation to try to see how we can arrive at our herd immunity. When we started looking for vaccines to procure, intermediaries were not part of our agenda. We were looking at what we will get from COVAX. We could not have waited between March and August because we were in the second wave, and we were dying more than when we had the disease in 2020”, he said.

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