COVAX DELIVERY
ACCRA: The World Health Organisation global vaccinesharing scheme Covax delivered its first Covid19 shots late Wednesday, as the race to inoculate the world’s poorest people and tame the pandemic accelerates.
Almost a year after the WHO described Covid19 as a global pandemic, a flight carrying 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine landed in Ghana’s capital Accra.
Local representatives of the WHO and the United Nations children’s agency Unicef described the vaccines’ arrival as a ‘‘momentous’’ step.
‘‘In the days ahead, frontline workers will begin to receive vaccines, and the next phase in the fight against this disease can begin — the rampingup of the largest immunisation campaign in history,’’ Unicef executive director Henrietta Fore said.
The delivery comes eight months after the launch of the Covax initiative, aimed at pooling funds from wealthier countries and nonprofits to distribute vaccines equitably around the world.
The shots, part of an initial tranche for low and middleincome countries, will be used by Ghana to start a vaccination drive from next Wednesday.
Covid19 infections have soared in Ghana to more than 81,200, and 584 people have died, with nearly as many dying in the first two months of this year as in all of 2020.
‘‘There are a lot of frontline workers who are selfisolating because they have been exposed and got infected,’’ Greater Accra Regional Hospital medical officer Emmanuel AddipaAdapoe said.
‘‘Receiving the vaccine will be like arming them for the task ahead.’’
The rollout in Ghana is a milestone for Covax, which is trying to narrow a politically sensitive gap between the millions being vaccinated in wealthier countries and the comparatively few who have received shots in less developed parts of the world.
It plans to deliver nearly 2 billion doses this year, including 1.8 billion to poorer countries at no cost to their governments, and to cover up to 20% of countries’ populations.
‘‘Today is a major first step towards realising our shared vision of vaccine equity, but it’s just the beginning,’’ WHO directorgeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday.
He had earlier warned that so far 210 million doses of vaccine had been administered globally but half of those were in just two countries and more than 200 countries were yet to administer a single dose.