Agyemang Manu Blames Supply-Cut For Failure To Vaccinate 20M Of Adult Population

The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, has stated that the government’s failure to vaccinate 20 million adults by the end of 2021, as planned, is due to months-long shortage of COVID vaccinations.

In an interview on the Breakfast Show on GBC, the minister said India, one of the country’s principal suppliers of the vaccine at the time halted supply to Ghana and other countries when the Delta variant reared its head.

Additionally, he pinpointed the COVAX facility which according to him, disappointed the country despite the orders placed for vaccines

“We couldn’t get to our 20million because, for nearly five months, we didn’t have vaccine supply in our stocks. We were relying on vaccines from India and when Delta hit India, they stopped the export of vaccines. At the time, that was our only sure bet.

“We were relying so much on the government initiative of COVAX. COVAX was going to give us a lot of vaccines; we had done all the arrangements and even ordered the portion that they were going to send to us. Unfortunately, all supplies stopped. Between March and August, we couldn’t have vaccines at all. So our vaccination programme was disrupted completely”, he justified.

President Akufo-Addo was hopeful of hitting his target when he announced it in July 2021; however during his last COVID address in 2021, he conceded that his ambition was a “race against time”.

Per statistics given by the Health Minister, close to over 9million people have been vaccinated out of which 6.6 million have had one dose with 2.9 million double vaxxed.

He added that “we are expecting that by the end of March, all things being equal we might have hit that (the 20 milion) percentage”.

Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini