The Member of Parliament for Effiduase-Asokore, Dr. Nana Ayew Afriyie has hailed the arrival of the first batch of the covid-19 vaccines in the country describing it as “critical and timely” in the country’s fight against the pandemic.

A total of 600,000 doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University arrived in the country on Wednesday, making Ghana the first African country to receive vaccines through the UN-backed COVAX scheme, which aims to get COVID-19 vaccines to the world’s most vulnerable people, in a global effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Government plans to distribute it across hospitals for vaccinations to begin by next Tuesday, March 2, 2021.

He called on the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), religious bodies, media to intensify education on the benefits for having the vaccination.

The delivery comes almost a year after the WHO first described the novel coronavirus as a global pandemic and eight months after the launch of the COVAX initiative, aimed at pooling funds from wealthier countries and non-profits to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and distribute it equitably around the world.

Ghana has recorded more than 80,700 cases of coronavirus and 580 deaths since the pandemic began. These numbers are believed to fall short of the actual toll because of low levels of testing.