Guyana is expected to receive a donation of 80,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19 from the Government of India net week.
According to Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony, the logistics for the arrival of the vaccines are currently being worked out.
The announcement of the donation was made on Friday.
Indian High Commissioner to Guyana Dr. K. J. Srinivasa stated that the donation by the government of India will be the same AstraZeneca vaccines produced by the Serum Institute which has recently been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“You would all recall that Barbados sent 3,000 vaccines from its quota, which was actually sent by India again. Out of the 100,000 sent to Barbados, they then sent 3000 across to Guyana but now Guyana will have its own 80,000,” the high commissioner said.
He further noted that the two governments will be working on a full collaboration in the event that Guyana would want more vaccines on a commercial basis. This, he said, will also be facilitated through the Serum Institute.
Dr. Srinivasa during the meeting with the health minister stated that the Institute hopes to produce about 650 million doses of the vaccine by July/ August of this year.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony expressed gratitude to the government of India for the donation as he noted that experts believe that the only way to exit the pandemic successfully is to achieve herd immunity through vaccinations. “And that is going to be a big task because right now there is such a scramble for vaccines globally” Anthony said.
He further added that while the COVAX facility is trying to coordinate the global effort for most countries, there has been some level of selfishness, which has put the facility in jeopardy sometimes.
“We know that you have your own needs, you have quite a large population and despite the needs that you have internally, you have decided to share with the rest of the world, the vaccines that you have,” he told the High Commissioner before also mentioning that the Caribbean at large is grateful for the allocation that has been set aside by India.
The High Commissioner revealed that the government of India has so far donated over 8 million doses of vaccines to over 30 countries around the world, with a number of other countries still to receive their donations.
According to the figures available up to Thursday, Guyana has recorded a total of 8,513 COVID-19 cases, with 28 new cases being confirmed on that day from the results of the testing of 763 samples.
To date there have been 195 deaths.