The delivery on Tuesday evening,  the biggest so far, adds to previous ones of 177,600 and 244,800 doses received in August and September respectively.

The vaccine deliveries are part of the historic COVID-19 vaccine advance procurement agreement signed on 28 March 2021 by AVAT for the purchase of 220 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine, with the potential to order an additional 180 million doses.

In total, the 400m vaccines acquired by AVAT are sufficient to immunise a third of the African population. Ama Amoah, Senior Specialist Digital & Internal Communications, Communications and Events Afreximbank, handed over the consignment to Dr Elysee Karikari Agyeman a Member of Health Commodity Group for COVID-19 at the Ministry of Health.

She emphasized that the vaccines were acquired by the Ghana government and not a donation.

The Member States who have ordered vaccines through AVAT will continue to receive shipments for the next following months.

AVAT was established by the African COVID-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, set up in November 2020 under the African Union chairmanship of President Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa.

It is part of the African Union’s COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Access Strategy, and its goal of vaccinating at least 60 percent of the African population with safe and efficacious vaccines against COVID-19.

The agreement with Johnson & Johnson was made possible through a US$2 billion facility provided by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), who are also the Financial and Transaction Advisers, Guarantors, Instalment Payment Advisers and Payment Agents, and the support of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) who coordinated the alignment of the AU Ministers of Finance on the financing arrangements.