We haven’t got enough Sputnik vaccines for inoculation programme – GHS Director of Public Health

The Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service says the reason why the country isn’t administering the Russian Sputnik vaccine is mainly that there isn’t enough in the country.

Dr Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe said even though the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) had registered both the Astrazeneca and Sputnik vaccines, the Sputnik vaccines were not enough to be added to the national vaccine rollout plan.

“The reason is that we need numbers. You see, we need to get a good plan, and it’s about numbers. So for now FDA has registered Astrazeneca and Sputnik, but we haven’t gotten the numbers of sputnik for us to get a clear plan,” he said

He told Joy New’s AM Show Thursday that government is targeting to vaccinate 20 million Ghanaians before the year ends in order to build the country’s immunity.

“And so if you have let’s say ten thousand [of the Sputnik vaccine], how are you going to distribute it? It’s too minute a number so that’s why we are expecting to get some large numbers of the Sputnik in the next few days or a week. And we’ll now see how to roll it out. So now it is about the numbers,” he said.

President Nana Akufo-Addo has said Ghana will take delivery of 17.6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines by June 2021, with more to come later in the year.

Delivering the State of the Nation Address (SONA) in Accra last Tuesday, he said a total of 262,335 Ghanaians had received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccines at 10:30 am on March 9.

He said government was working hard towards realising its goal to vaccinate 20 million Ghanaians and called for the support of all to make it a success.