A little over two hundred thousand Ghanaians have received their first dozes in the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination exercise, the government has announced.

The exercise began exactly a week ago with the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Greater Accra region has recorded the highest number of persons vaccinated.

Director-General of the Ghana Health Service Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye speaking at a press conference at Peduase Monday disclosed “as of 7th March, a total of over 202,252 persons have been vaccinated. This is the one that has been ticked electronically.”

He revealed “Greater Accra alone has vaccinated about 128,088 but they have about 58,000 people they have vaccinated which are yet to be entered. Because they are yet to be entered because we are reporting from the electronic platform that is why it is so.”

“So, Ashanti would have about the third of the numbers to be entered. The largest number vaccinated so far are the over 60’s which currently stands at about 51,000 plus, followed by health workers 47,000. And then we have persons with underlying health conditions being the third with about 31,000,” he added.

Ghana on Friday, March 5, received 50,000 pieces of COVID-19 vaccines from the Government of India

At a short ceremony to receive the vaccines, Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said: “The donation, coming just a few days after the historic delivery of Six Hundred Thousand doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines to Ghana, under the COVAX Initiative, is certainly noteworthy support to our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects the very cordial and fraternal relations between Ghana and India. Furthermore, it underscores the mutual commitment of our two governments to work in solidarity and partnership to address common challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The initial tranche of deliveries of the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine was received on February 24, 2021.

The first shipment of the vaccines from Covax was backed by the World Health Organization as part of efforts to procure and distribute inoculations for free to poor countries.

“These 600,000 Covax vaccines are part of an initial tranche of deliveries of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine licensed to the Serum Institute of India, which represent part of the first wave of Covid vaccines headed to several low and middle-income countries,” said UNICEF, which organized the shipment from Mumbai, in a joint statement with the WHO.

Covax has said it would deliver two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines globally by the end of 2021.