A Research Fellow at the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), Dr. Yaw Bediako, says the government must be measured in its quest to obtain Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccines to complement the country’s COVID-19 vaccination roll-out.
He wants the government to move away from its fixation on Sputnik-V and concentrate on getting more AstraZeneca vaccines if it is really determined to meet its vaccination target and achieve herd immunity.
Speaking on the Point of View on Citi TV, Dr. Bediako, also an immunologist, charged the government to intensify its efforts and revise its vaccine acquisition strategy going forward.
“Sputnik should not really be our focus. I think we have to be focusing on how we can get more of the AstraZeneca to complete the first group of people who have been vaccinated so far”, he advised.
Citing the G7 leaders meeting, the research fellow suggested that there are still vaccine doses from industrialized countries such as the US among others, and that “those are the doses we should chase”.
He made a strong case for the AstraZeneca vaccines, although the country missed out on the 12 weeks timeframe for administering the second dose of AstraZeneca.
“Feasibility is a moving game, and we just have to try as hard as we can. I think that has to be our first priority because we currently have others who still need the second dose. The window is not indefinite based on what we have seen with the variant. There is really no data beyond the 12 weeks.”
“Everybody who used the two doses vaccinated in 12 weeks because they had the vaccines. We are in uncharted territories, we don’t know how the dosage will be if they get it later, but it is still worth vaccinating people to get their second dose”, Dr. Bediako urged.
Ghana took delivery of 650,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facility in addition to 50,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from the Indian government and 165,000 from MTN for its mass vaccination program.
The country has since been struggling to get more vaccines to immunize its 20 million target population.
It has however emerged that the government is using the services of middlemen to procure some of Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccines but at a higher cost of US$ 19 other than the original factory price of US$ 10.
This move has not gone done well with some stakeholders including the Minority in Parliament calling for an abrogation of the procurement contract.
Health officials have given assurances that they are working earnestly to secure more vaccines for the second dose of AstraZeneca.
In the light of challenges with the global supply chain of vaccines, countries like Nigeria halted giving out the first jabs as a means of saving the remaining doses to be given as second jabs to those who inoculated during the first vaccination exercise.
Some experts have suggested that Ghana considers this approach.
But health authorities say, they will focus on having as many Ghanaians as possible receiving the first jab despite concerns about inadequate supply of vaccines.
The Presidential Advisor on Health and a member of Ghana’s COVID-19 health team, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare, maintains Ghana will stick to its existing plan for vaccination.
“We hope that we get these things within the next few weeks to give them to all those 500,000 people who have taken their first dose. We hope to get them their doses before the expiry which is towards the end of June and the others, beginning of July.”