The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) says research findings on the two vaccines from India and China are being evaluated and will be completed in the next 10 days.

Speaking at a press launch of the Covid-19 vaccination exercise in the Ashanti Region, the Chief Executive Officer of the Authority, Delese Mimi Darko disclosed that work is being done quickly to guide the purchase of the vaccines.

She also indicated that work on the Sputnik vaccine from Russia is far advance.

“We have worked on other vaccines; the Sputnik vaccine, two vaccines from India and China and once we do the evaluation and discover that it is safe, the Ministry will do the purchasing,” she said, adding that her outfit has so far evaluated four of the newly-developed vaccines.

She further disclosed that they are "also in discussion with other companies and once they bring their documentations we will evaluate them."

“When we do this sort of thing in a pandemic, we use not more than 15 days. So people work on weekends to review the documentation. So in the next 10 days, we would have finished reviewing the two; the ones coming from China and India, and know whether it is good to use or not," she stated.

Madam Darko also assured Ghanaians that her outfit undertook all the required processes to ascertain the quality and safety of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine which is being distributed.

She, therefore, asked all and sundry to go out in their numbers and vaccinate.

“We have evaluated these vaccines; we have looked at the quality, its efficacy and its safety. We have not compromised on anything to make this vaccine available. This vaccine, during its trial was used on 40, 000 people and since it was approved in other countries, it has been used on over 30 million people.

“The FDA of Ghana is at a maturity level agency listed by the WHO we are also a regional centre of excellence so there is no way we will allow a vaccine that is not safe to be used on Ghanaians."

Meanwhile, the authority says the side effects of the AstraZaneca Vaccines being used in the country have mild side effects.

“There are very few side effects to this vaccines and they are the normal side effects that you would get when you use any other vaccine; a bit of chills, a bit of headache but within one to two days it will go.

“And we have a good safety monitoring system in place that will ensure that everybody who is vaccinated will be followed up so that if they experience any side effect other than the mild side effects it will be reported and managed appropriately,” he said.