COVAX delivers its first vaccine shots with shipment to Ghana

By Christian Akorlie

ACCRA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization's global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX delivered its first COVID-19 shots on Wednesday, as the race to inoculate the world's poorest people and tame the pandemic accelerates.

Almost a year after the WHO described the novel coronavirus as a global pandemic, a flight carrying 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India 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 ramping up of the largest immunization campaign in history," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

The delivery comes eight months after the launch of the COVAX initiative, aimed at pooling funds from wealthier countries and non-profits to distribute vaccines equitably around the world.

The shots, part of an initial tranche for low and middle-income countries, will be used by Ghana to start a vaccination drive from March 2 that will prioritise frontline health workers and others at high risk.

"The first segment of the population that will receive the 600,000 doses will be health workers, adults 60 years and over, people with underlying health conditions," Ghana's government said on Wednesday.

Some senior government officials, teachers, security personnel and essential workers in Accra and the country's second city Kumasi, will also be vaccinated.

Coronavirus infections have soared in Ghana to over 81,200, and 584 people have died, with nearly as many dying in the first two months of this year as in the whole of 2020, health ministry data showed.

"There are a lot of frontline workers who are self-isolating because they have been exposed and got infected," Emmanuel Addipa-Adapoe, a medical officer at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital, said. "Receiving the vaccine will be like arming them for the task ahead."

EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION

The roll-out 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.