Close to 199,000 persons have so far received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine even as the health minister yesterday appealed for those vaccinated to come forward for their second dose.
During his daily update, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony stated that some 198,956 persons have received first doses accounting for some 40.9% of the country’s adult population. As it relates to second doses he noted that a total of 68,333 persons have since been fully immunized.
The minister said he hoped that Guyana would surpass 200,000 first doses by the end of yesterday. Speaking on the ongoing programme, he noted that a vaccination drive thru was held in Region Two over the weekend which saw a fairly good turnout.
“They were able to do around 250 vaccines in that drive thru and then yesterday they did another exercise that yielded about 253 or so”, the minister said.
During the update, he went on to state that Guyana will have adequate second doses of the Sputnik V vaccine soon and assured that there is a supply of second doses of the AstraZeneca shots here. He noted that some persons have been calling as they are afraid that those vaccines will run short. On this note, Anthony reiterated that for every first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been administered one has been put in storage to provide second doses and as such persons should not be worried.
As it relates to the Sinopharm vaccines he said a similar process was followed as half of the 20,000 donated by China was administered as first doses while the other half was kept back for second doses.
“Now we have given out most of the Sinopharm first dose and what we want now is for people to come back and get their second dose. The vaccine, the interval between first and second dose is four weeks and we know that they’re quite a number of persons who received the first dose and are now due for the second dose but they’re not showing up”, he said, while making an appeal for those persons who received the said vaccine to come forward and get their second doses.
He noted that a first dose does not provide full protection as the authorities have seen persons become infected after having only one.
Anthony stated, “We want people to come back and get their second dose, because we have seen that everyone who has gotten their second dose they’re not getting the infection, we haven’t had any case of anybody getting the infection, we haven’t had any case of persons who are fully vaccinated coming into the hospital. We have had no case of someone who has been fully vaccinated getting into the ICU nor have we had any case of someone who has been fully vaccinated dying from COVID”.
