Ghana has received an additional 244,800 doses of Johnson and Johnson vaccines as government continues its drive to get 20 million Ghanaians vaccinated by October this year.

The jabs were delivered through the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT) in Accra on Thursday, September 2.

The AVAT mechanism was established by the African Union (AU) and is supported by the World Bank.

This forms part of government’s interventions to ensure the country attains herd immunity in the fight against the virus.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic is not slowing down on the African continent, with at least 26 Africans dying from the virus every hour – that’s nearly 10,000 deaths per month.

The third wave has been driven mainly by the more transmissible delta variant.

Speaking at a news briefing on September 2, WHO Director for the Africa Region, Dr Matsidiso Moeti, believes that with the emergence of a new and more lethal strain from South Africa, the situation is likely to worsen.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) is expanding its capacity to improve its virus sequencing.

The Service took delivery of equipment that will aid the National Public Health & Reference Laboratory to join Centres at the University of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology to sequence Covid-19 samples for more effective management of cases.

However, health authorities in the Ashanti Region say they are considering extending the five-day period set aside for the AstraZeneca vaccination.

This comes in the wake of hours of heavy rains that affected the exercise all day on Thursday.

Residents who queued at vaccination centres hoping to access the second dose of the vaccine were left stranded for several hours as the exercise delayed.

Therefore, the health officials believe the extension will help them clear the backlog of jabs needed to be administered.