According to official figures from Ghana Health Services, three hundred ninety-six thousand seven hundred fifty-nine (396,759) Ghanaian residents have received both doses of the AstraZeneca Coronavirus vaccine, making up only 1.3% of the nation’s population of 30 million.

The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye on Sunday, July 4, 2021, announced that as of June 30, the country had administered a total of 1,261,677 doses of the vaccine. A figure that falls short of the initial target.

Vaccine Challenges

Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta recently blamed the poor percentage of vaccination on the country’s inability to secure the much-needed vaccines; an indirect result of vaccine nationalization by countries in the global north.

 “The Western world may have about 68 doses per 100 people while Ghana has 2 doses per 100 and that cannot continue,” he said.

Ghana initially planned to procure 17.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of June 2021 in order to reach its goal of achieving herd immunity by vaccinating 20 million people.

This however has become a herculean task for the government as it has failed to secure vaccines beyond the 1.3 million free shots it’s received mainly from the World Health Organization-backed Covax Initiative,  with smaller donations coming from the Indian government and Africa’s biggest mobile operator, MTN Group Ltd.

Ghana currently has 1,619 active cases of COVID-19 and an average daily case count of about 80 cases.