The Office of the President today said that 83,000 doses of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine arrived this morning at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
The arrival of the Russian-made vaccine will be a boost to the current vaccination programme which is facilitating all persons over the age of 18.
The Ministry of Health on its Facebook page today said that over 86,000 persons have been vaccinated.
To date, Guyana has received donations of 3,000 AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccines from Barbados, 20,000 Sinopharm vaccines from China and 80,000 AZ vaccines from India. Guyana in turn donated 5,000 shots from the Indian donation to Barbados. Guyana has also received 55,000 shots of Sputnik V that it purchased and 24,000 doses of AZ through the COVAX mechanism. All of the vaccines acquired so far require two shots to be administered per person. It would mean that Guyana has received enough vaccines to fully inoculate – two shots each – 88,500 persons.
The arrival today of the 83,000 Sputnik doses will cater for full inoculation of another 41, 500 persons which means that 130,000 persons are fully catered for leaving roughly 370,000 more persons in the target group and 740,000 vaccines to acquire. Today’s arrival is the single largest shipment to date.
Meanwhile, the Reuters news agency today reported that Russian scientists have found the Sputnik V vaccine 97.6% effective against COVID-19 in a “real-world” assessment based on data from 3.8 million people. This is according to Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute and the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
The new effectiveness rate is higher than the 91.6% rate outlined in results from a large-scale trial of Sputnik V that was published in The Lancet medical journal earlier this year, and compares favourably with data on the effectiveness of other COVID-19 vaccines, Reuters said.
The report said that the new data was based on 3.8 million Russians who received both a first shot and a booster shot as part of the national roll-out of Sputnik V.
“This data confirms that Sputnik V demonstrates one of the best protection rates against coronavirus among all vaccines,” said Kirill Dmitriev, head of the RDIF sovereign wealth fund which is backing the vaccine.
The incidence of infection was calculated from the 35th day from the first injection, the statement said, showing an incidence rate of 0.027%, Reuters said.
The new data will be published in a peer-reviewed medical journal next month, the statement added, according to Reuters.
The data was collated from a database kept by the health ministry that registers vaccinated people, as well as a separate database of people who were infected with COVID-19 in the country, the statement said, Reuters added.