Ghana’s program manager for the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), Kwame Amponsa-Akyianu, has revealed that while Ghana expects to receive another consignment of COVID-19 vaccines in two weeks, the second doses of the COVID-19 vaccines will be dispensed in eight weeks’ time after the first dose have been deployed.
He made this known during an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show aired on e.TV Ghana and Happy98.9FM.
His statement was in response to Samuel Eshun’s question about why the first consignment was not divided into two to cater for the first and second doses of the vaccine.
“We are giving all 600,000 doses as the first dose and we will use the one to be provided in the next two weeks as the second dose. We are confident that we have to give all because within the next two weeks we will get another dose. The second dose will be in eight weeks so we cannot keep half of what we have now for eight weeks”.
He furthered that these matters have been extensively deliberated on to reach the conclusion of disbursing all the 600,000 doses as the first dose. “We thought of this for several days and we have all agreed that let’s give all out because within the next two weeks we will get new ones and remember in this pandemic we are working at speed”, he added.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “the recommended dosage of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is two doses given intramuscularly (0.5ml each) with an interval of 8 to 12 weeks”.
It adds, however, that “additional research is needed to understand longer-term potential protection after a single dose”.
On Wednesday, 24th February 2021, Ghana, under the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative, received 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India (Covishield).
The country is targeting a herd immunity of its population as it expects to vaccinate some twenty-million persons from the first week of March.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah
