Coronavirus: Ghana Becomes First West African Country To Receive Covax Vaccine
600,000 AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccines created by Covax land in Ghana
Tanitoluwa J. Adedotun 
Ghana has become the first country to receive the delivery of Covax coronavirus vaccines.
On Wednesday, 24th of February, 2021, 600,000 AstraZeneca shots landed in a plane as part of the global effort to boost vaccine access.
The doses touching down in the capital, Accra, come from the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer.
Boxes of vaccines left Mumbai on Tuesday for Dubai, where a logistics crew picked up hundreds of thousands of syringes, before heading toward Africa’s west coast.
“In the days ahead, front line workers will begin to receive vaccines, and the next phase in the fight against this disease can begin — the ramping up of the largest immunization campaign in history,” Henrietta Fore, the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, said in a statement.
This comes days after President Biden pledged $4 billion to the multilateral pact known as Covax; a sharp contrast to the Trump administration's refusal to back the World Health Organization-approved mission.
The immunisation help lands in Ghana, the West African country of 31 million which had been selected as the first recipient after sending a rollout plan to Covax proving its health-care teams and cold chain equipment were ready to support a quick distribution.
Other nations across West Africa are expected to soon receive similar Covax shipments.
Ghana kicked off its rollout months after vaccinations began in wealthier nations, highlighting the deep disparities of shot distribution as the pandemic throttles life around the globe.
Covax projects that it will deliver 2.3 billion doses by the year’s end — most of which will go to poorer countries, free of charge. High-income nations, however, have already snapped up twice that amount, according to a Duke University tracker.
“So far, 210 million doses of vaccine have been administered globally — but half of those are in just two countries,” WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday in Geneva. “More than 200 countries are yet to administer a single dose.”
Covax organizers have faced a long battle to secure funding, particularly after Trump opted out of participating — a decision informed by his feud with the WHO.
Ghana has recorded more than 80,700 coronavirus cases and 580 deaths.
