The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has given approval for the importation, distribution and use of two additional Covid-19 vaccines in the country.
The approval of the two new vaccines; Moderna (Spikevax) and Pfizer BioNtech (Comirnaty); brings the total number of approved Covid-19 vaccines for use in the country to five.
Currently, the Covid-19 vaccines which have been approved by the FDA are the Sputnik V, Covishield TM and Covid-19 Vaccine Jassen.
In a press release to announce the new development, the FDA assured the public of its commitment to use the Emergency Use Authorization (El-JA) pathway, which is the accepted procedure for all national regulatory authorities globally, in order to ensure timely access to quality and safe medical products including vaccines during this pandemic.
“The Authority therefore wishes to assure the public that all the approved COVID-19 vaccines have been subjected to rigorous safety parameters and therefore the public are to receive these vaccines without any reservations.
The FDA remains committed to safeguarding the health and safety of the public as mandated by the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851),” FDA CEO, Delese Darko said in the release.
The country’s Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign has witnessed a slow pace due to the global shortage of vaccines.
Since the exercise started in March this year just 405,971 persons have received the full dose of two jabs whilst 865,422 have received a single dose.
In all, 1,271,393 vaccine doses have been administered as against the 20 million adult population targeted by the government for vaccination.
President Akufo Addo in his 26th Covid-19 update over the weekend said the country is expecting a total of 18, 478,670 (18.4 million) doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the course of the third quarter of the year from the governments of the United States, United Kingdom and other donor agencies.
That include 17 million single dose per person Johnson & Johnson vaccines through the African Medicine Platform, one million Pfizer vaccines from the United States of America through the COVAX facility, 229,670 Pfizer vaccines from the African Union, and 249,000 AstraZeneca vaccines from the United Kingdom.
President Akufo-Addo stressed that all the vaccines to be used in the country had been certified as safe-for-use by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and, therefore should be no hesitancy amongst the population who are yet to be vaccinated.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri