A Pharmacist and Fellow at the Centre for Democratic Development Ghana (CDD-Ghana), Dr Kwame Asiedu Sarpong has said Ghana’s decision to settle for AstraZeneca vaccine is not out of place.

His comment comes on the back of some questions about the effectiveness of AstraZeneca as it has been identified to be less potent against the South African variant of the novel coronavirus.

“We are not out of place going with the AstraZeneca vaccine because one, from a balance of cost, it’s the cheapest, it goes for about 3 dollars compared with Modena which is 30 dollars,” he said on PM Express Wednesday.

He, therefore, wants Ghana to focus the discourse on educating people on the positives of the vaccines to clear the doubts.

“We don’t know whether we have a significant amount of the South African variant in the country because there is no sequence enough.”

According to Dr Asiedu Sarpong, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been proven to do what it is supposed to do with severe disease and additionlally cut down mortality.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), he noted has on Wednesday, updated its website on South Africa’s variant with information which indicated that the AstraZeneca vaccine is capable of preserving people from getting severely ill.

The Pharmacist suggested that the country focuses on inculcating into Ghanaians the need to accept the vaccine as the country’s literacy rate stands at 70%, leaving behind 30% of the population.

Dr Asiedu Sarpong however believes that 75% of the country's population is needed to herd immunity to be realised “so even to achieve head immunity assuming our literacy rate is accurate,” we still have many Ghanaians who are illiterate hence our inability to achieve that desired goal if it is adopted.

“Let’s use the churches, mosques, let’s us the traditional birth attendances, let’s use the facilities that people communicate and congregate to decimate information about these vaccines.”