Almost all 600,000 doses of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine received from the COVAX facility have been distributed in the first phase of the vaccination exercise.

Dr Kwame Amponsah-Achiano, the Programme Manager of the Extended Programme on Immunization (EPI), said the first consignment received in February were almost exhausted and, so far, the programme had not received any report of vaccine rejection in any of the 43 districts they were deployed to.

He told the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra that there was more pressure on the vaccine now than before with less than five per cent wastage recorded.

Dr Amponsah-Achiano said the EPI would, from next week, begin vaccination of all health workers in all the 16 regions adding that the Ghana Health Service was happy with the outcome of the first phase.

”The initial hesitancy was quiet problematic, but between the time we received the vaccine and the time we started the roll out, a lot has changed, the apprehension went down, and so far we have distributed all the vaccines,” he said.

He said the country had already taken delivery of 15,000 doses of the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine from Russia but it was not in use presently.

“We have not started using it because that first and second doses of Sputnik V are not the same, the vaccine has a match dosing regimen and unfortunately, we did not get matching quantities, we are putting it on hold for now until we get matching quantities,” he said.