The remaining shipment of COVID-19 vaccines from the World Health Organisation’s COVAX facility has been delayed according to the Minister of Health while noting that the authorities have seen a decline in turnout for the first doses.
These statements were made by Dr Frank Anthony during his daily COVID-19 update where he disclosed that while the vaccines from COVAX were expected to be here in mid-June, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has since received correspondence indicating that there is a delay in the shipment.
“Now they are scheduled to send those shipments in July. So we await from COVAX the specific dates when we will get it in July,” Anthony said, adding that COVAX has been Guyana’s source of the AstraZeneca shots.
He also mentioned that regarding the vaccines Guyana is expected to receive from the African Union, the government has already paid for those Johnson & Johnson single-dose jabs and they’re currently arranging possible arrival dates for those shipments.
Further, the government has also already paid for the 100,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccines that have been ordered. These shots he said are expected to be here by the end of this month or early in July.
Meanwhile, Anthony stated that in some regions, the authorities have seen a decline in first-dose vaccinations. “Initially we thought perhaps because of the flood, people were not coming forward but in some of those areas the flooding has eased up and we’re still not seeing people coming out.”
To address this the ministry has already been engaging Regional Health Officers and will be conducting assessments. However, it was reported that some persons are a bit more hesitant and as a result the cause of the hesitancy will need to be ascertained and subsequently addressed.
The minister also informed that as of Wednesday, 229,846 persons have so far received their first dose of a vaccine while 103,029 persons are now fully inoculated. The minister gave a regional breakdown of the percentage of persons vaccinated:
