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Accra, Ghana: Ghana received the world’s first delivery of coronavirus vaccines from the United Nations-backed COVAX initiative on Wednesday (Accra time) — the long-awaited start for a program that has thus far fallen short of hopes that it would ensure shots were given quickly to the world’s most vulnerable people.
The arrival of 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the West African country marks the beginning of the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history, according to the World Health Organisation and UNICEF.
It is a linchpin of efforts to bring the pandemic to an end and has been hailed as the first time the world has delivered a highly sought-after vaccine to poor countries during an ongoing outbreak.
The first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines distributed by the COVAX Facility arriving at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana. Credit:AP
“Today marks the historic moment for which we have been planning and working so hard. With the first shipment of doses, we can make good on the promise of the COVAX facility to ensure people from less wealthy countries are not left behind in the race for life-saving vaccines,” said Henrietta Fore, executive director of UNICEF, which delivered the vaccines.
But the initiative, formed to ensure fair access to vaccines by low- and middle-income countries, has been hampered by the severely limited global supply of doses and logistical problems. Although it aims to deliver 2 billion shots this year, it currently has legally binding agreements only for several hundred million shots.
It already missed its own goal of beginning vaccinations in poor countries at the same time immunisations were rolled out in rich ones. The overall campaign thus far has been extremely uneven: 80 per cent of the 210 million doses administered worldwide thus far were given in just 10 countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week.
The first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines arrives in Accra, Ghana.Credit:AP
That delay led numerous poorer countries to rush to sign their own deals, potentially undermining COVAX’s efforts to get shots to the neediest people.
And some countries can’t afford to go it alone.
Ghana is among 92 countries that will receive vaccines for free through the initiative, which is led by the WHO; Gavi, a vaccine group; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. Another 90 countries and eight territories have agreed to pay.
Ghana, a nation of 30 million people that has recorded 81,245 cases and 584 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, plans to begin vaccinations on March 2. Neighbouring Ivory Coast will be the next to receive vaccines, and also will roll them out starting next week.
Even as it celebrated receiving the first doses, Ghana noted the long road ahead.
“The government of Ghana remains resolute at ensuring the welfare of all Ghanaians and is making frantic efforts to acquire adequate vaccines to cover the entire population through bilateral and multilateral agencies,” Ghana’s acting minister of information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, said in a statement.
Moderna said on Wednesday it is working with US government scientists to study an experimental booster shot that targets a concerning new variant of the coronavirus and has raised its global COVID-19 vaccine production goal for this year by 100 million doses.
The US biotech company has produced raw material for a booster shot aimed at addressing the virus variant first found in South Africa that may be more resistant to existing vaccines, it said. It has shipped the vaccine to the United States’ National Institutes of Health for additional study.
France’s government, meanwhile, ordered a weekend lockdown in the Dunkirk area to arrest an “alarming” rise in COVID-19 cases, signalling extra curbs might also be needed elsewhere as daily cases nationwide hit their highest since November.
Unlike some of its neighbours, France has resisted a new national lockdown to control more contagious coronavirus variants, hoping a curfew in place since December 15 can contain the pandemic.
But it reported 31,519 new infections on Wednesday, up from 25,018 a week ago and the most since mid-November.
In the US regulators said Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective, a key milestone on the path toward giving Americans access to the first such shot to work in a single dose.
The announcement came as President Joe Biden plans to distribute millions of face masks to Americans in communities hard-hit by the coronavirus.
Biden is aiming to reach undeserved communities and those bearing the brunt of the outbreak. His plan will distribute masks not through the mail, but through Federally Qualified Community Health Centres and the nation’s food bank and food pantry systems.
The White House announced it expects more than 25 million American-made cloth masks in both adult and kid sizes will be distributed.
AP, Reuters
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