Russia announces Ghana’s registration of Sputnik V vaccine

Health News for Sunday February 21, 2021

Source: GNA

02/21/2021

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced the registration of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Ghana.

The vaccine has been approved under the emergency use authorization procedure – a route that ensures that a medical product or necessary vaccines are made available on time without compromising its safety or effectiveness in the event of an emergency. ‘health emergency.

A statement made available to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra on Saturday said Ghana was the 31st country in the world and the 5th African state to sign up for the Sputnik V vaccine.

Sputnik V is one of the top three coronavirus vaccines in the world in terms of the number of approvals issued by government regulators.

It has been approved in Russia, Belarus, Argentina, Bolivia, Serbia, Algeria, Palestine, Venezuela, Paraguay, Turkmenistan, Hungary, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Republic of Guinea, Tunisia, Armenia, Mexico, Nicaragua.

Republika Srpska (entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lebanon, Myanmar, Pakistan, Mongolia, Bahrain, Montenegro, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Gabon and San Marino Kirill Dmitriev also endorsed the vaccine.

The statement said the Department of Health has carefully reviewed the data on the safety and efficacy of the Sputnik V vaccine and approved its use.

The effectiveness of Sputnik V is 91.6%, as confirmed by data published in The Lancet, one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world.

The vaccine is one of only three vaccines in the world with over 90% effectiveness and provides complete protection against severe cases of COVID-19.

The Sputnik V vaccine is based on a proven and well-researched platform of human adenoviral vectors, which cause colds and have been around for thousands of years.

The release states that the Sputnik V vaccine uses two different vectors for the two injections during a vaccination cycle, which provides longer lasting immunity than vaccines using the same delivery mechanism for both injections.

He said that the safety, efficacy and absence of long-term negative effects of adenoviral vaccines have been proven by more than 250 clinical studies over two decades.

The statement said that the developers of the Sputnik V vaccine are working with AstraZeneca on a joint clinical trial to improve the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

He said there were no strong allergies caused by Sputnik V and the price of the vaccine was less than $ 10 per injection, making it affordable worldwide.

Health Minister-designate Kwaku Agyemang-Manu during a media engagement called on Ghanaians to be ready for the coronavirus vaccination in March this year.

“We all need to be vaccinated in this country,” he said.

The minister-designate said it was not true that the Covid-19 vaccines were developed to kill Africans and that the vaccines would instead protect the public from the virus.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said vaccination was not new to the world and Ghana, and the country had successfully eliminated many diseases through the use of vaccines.

“This is for prevention so you don’t get infected and even if you are infected, the severity of the disease will not get out of hand,” he explained.

The Ghana News Agency concluded that the government had requested two different Covid-19 vaccines; Covishield; the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute in India; and the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, made in Russia.

Both are expected to arrive in the country by the end of the month.

The minister-designate said that while the nation waited for vaccination to start, it was paramount that every Ghanaian adhere to coronavirus prevention protocols.

Mr. Agyemang-Manu said the health ministry would deploy a total of 12,471 vaccinators, 37,413 volunteers and 2,079 team supervisors for a planned two-round vaccination campaign.

Ghana Health Service (GHS) Director General Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said it was time for the individual to focus on how to naturally defend against the virus.

He said the available vaccines had been shown to be effective and Ghana needed to break the chain of coronavirus transmission through vaccination.

Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) chief executive Dr Delese AA Darko said both vaccines were ordered through emergency use authorization so as not to compromise their safety or effectiveness.

She said that to monitor the safety of the vaccine during the campaign, her team had set up a nationwide safety monitoring system to ensure that every person vaccinated was actively monitored for the detection and management of any side effects in all parts of the country.

The program director, Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, said the vaccination would be done in three segments.

According to him, the first segment would involve healthcare workers, front-line security personnel, people with highlighted health conditions, front-line members of the executive, legislature and judiciary as well as the elderly. 60 years and over.

The second segment, he said, would focus on essential service providers and other security agencies such as water and electricity providers, teachers, media, farmers as well as actors. of the food value chain, among others, adding that the third segment would be the public.

Dr Yaw Bediako, head of the West African Center for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens, said the vaccine was safe and would protect the public from contracting the virus.

The program director said 188 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine had been administered worldwide and that there were very few reports of his reactions.