Close to 20,000 persons in Guyana were vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Sunday, according to Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony, who says government is continuing to explore avenues to procure vaccines to immunise the entire adult population.
During yesterday’s COVID-19 update, Anthony said that the vaccination campaign is going well and added that as the rollout continues this week, the ministry plans to increase the amount of sites that are operating and conducting the immunisations apart from the fixed sites that have already been set up.
“We have been able to work with our healthcare workers at the health centres and you would see us now shifting to a lot of the health centres across the country,” he stated, while adding that this shift would come as the nurses at these sites know how to administer vaccines and have been provided with additional information as it relates to the two vaccines that are currently in use in Guyana.
With this approach, the ministry hopes to be able to reach more persons closer to where they live and further reach its current target of immunising all persons 60 years and above.
In this regard, Anthony mentioned that the res-ponse to vaccination from the elderly population has been good. He mentioned his own recent visit to a vaccination site in Albion, in Region Six, where he noted there was a constant stream of persons coming to the site to be inoculated.
“We also had in that area community organisers who went out into the community [and] were able to identify those older persons. Some of them might not be able to walk long distances, so they helped them by using some taxis, picking them up, getting them to the site, getting them immunised. After they have been observed for the 15 minutes then they take them back to their homes,” he said of his time there.
He commended the actions of the persons involved in the community efforts and noted that this approach should be taken in other communities.
Meanwhile, at a news conference yesterday afternoon Anthony underscored the need to procure more vaccines to cover the entire population as he noted that Guyana is still awaiting a promised donation through the international COVAX initiative and there is no definite date for their arrival.
Anthony noted that Guyana was promised 108,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and has been told so far that it could expect 24,000 within the next three weeks. “Today, I actually received another letter to say that within the next three weeks that we can expect 24,000 doses of the vaccine. And they have not only done this to Guyana, they have done this to Suriname and to some of the other Carib-bean countries, where they have constantly reduced the amount of the allocation to some of these countries and that’s worrying for us,” Anthony said.
The COVAX or COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access initiative, co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the World Health Organi-zation (WHO), alongside UNICEF, is intended to coordinate international resources to enable the equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, among other things.
Government, Anthony noted, was expecting and planning to utilise the doses to get certain segments of the country’s population inoculated and seeing that the quota has now been reduced it has to look at other alternatives.
“We have gone to other bilateral arrangements to be able to secure those vaccines for our citizens and we will continue to do that. In a lot of cases, we will have to buy these vaccines and make sure that we have vaccines for our citizens,” he added.
Anthony mentioned that Guyana is expecting to receive 200,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V shots starting next week, in tranches of 50,000. Anthony said when these doses arrive, authorities will then move on to immunising other frontline workers as the country will then have in stock enough vaccines to cover them.
Healthcare workers and persons age 60 and over in 2021 are the focus of the current vaccination programme.
As of now, Guyana has received donations of 103,000 doses of vaccines which can immunise a maximum of 51,500 persons.
