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Updated at 2:10 pm ET
The first wave of coronavirus vaccines from the COVAX initiative is now reaching their destinations. Ghana became the first country to receive the vaccine on Wednesday, marking an important step in the international effort to help low- and middle-income countries cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the first round of allocations continues to unfold, more countries will receive their own doses in the coming days, according to the World Health Organization, leader of the initiative. In total, the COVAX alliance expects to deliver nearly 2 billion doses of the vaccines this year.
The 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine that arrived in Ghana were produced by the Serum Institute of India. Along with the initial shipment to Accra, more deliveries are expected to arrive in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, this week, according to WHO. Vital supplies will also include the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The shipments are the beginning of “what should be the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history,” according to a joint statement by WHO Representative in Ghana, Dr. Francis Kasolo, and UNICEF Representative in Ghana, Anne-Claire Dufay.
“After a year of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 80,700 Ghanaians infected with the virus and more than 580 lives lost, the road to recovery for the people of Ghana may finally begin,” said Kasolo and Dufay .
As for why Ghana, in West Africa, was chosen to receive the vaccine before other countries, a UNICEF representative told NPR that the country was eligible to receive the vaccine. After Ghana’s national deployment and vaccination plan was approved, they said, the country was added to the allocation process.
Other factors that affect when countries receive the vaccine include the speed with which they obtain national approval and provide an import license for COVID-19 vaccines.
The COVAX initiative was created to drive equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, particularly for low-income countries. Through donations, licenses and construction purchases, COVAX helps those countries acquire vaccines, something they have fought for, as rich countries compete with each other to buy the limited amount of vaccines worldwide.
“We will not end the pandemic anywhere unless we do it everywhere,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Today is an important first step toward realizing our shared vision of vaccine equity, but it is only the beginning.”
As WHO’s Dr. Katherine O’Brien, director of the WHO Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologics, told NPR earlier this month, “We are in a situation where we have 108 million doses of vaccines that they have been distributed worldwide, but 75% of those doses have gone to only 10 countries. “
For most of the COVAX initiative’s existence, the United States did not join the coalition. But President Biden has reversed that course, and the United States recently announced that it would send about $ 4 billion in contributions to COVAX. Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
