Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony yesterday announced that Guyana has received a quantity of long-awaited Sputnik V second doses and that administration would begin from today.
The announcement was made during his COVID-19 update, where he stated that authorities have now been able to bring some of those doses into the country despite a global shortage in the jabs.
“We had some difficulties in sourcing the second dose because of what is happening globally. There have been several outbreaks around the world with the Delta variant and this particular vaccine seems to be doing very well against the Delta variant,” Anthony stated.
While he did not say how many second doses arrived in the tranche, he mentioned that the Health Ministry will begin administering second shots today. With this tranche, he noted, second doses would be given to persons who received their first shot in April as those persons would be nearing the 90-day window to receive both doses.
“With the second dose that we now have we would like to give it to the persons who… have received their first dose in April, so they are now coming closer to that 90-day period and we want them to get first preference,” he said.
Anthony added that the country is expected to receive another tranche of second doses next week and as a result everyone will be able to receive their second dose.
The Ministry of Health announced in late May that the country was out of the second dose component for the vaccine, which is different from the first dose component. It was later revealed by a document from the Russian authority that prior to this latest shipment, Guyana received a total of 305,537 Sputnik V shots, with 244,268 accounting for the first dose component and 61,268 accounting for the second doses. This meant that Guyana would need a total of 183,000 second doses to totally match the first dose numbers.
Meanwhile, during the update, the minister noted that the country continues to administer three primary vaccines as part of its inoculation programme. Those vaccines are AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and the Sputnik V. Dr. Anthony said that as of Saturday a total of 239,453 persons have received their first dose of a vaccine, accounting for 49.2% of the country’s adult population.
Additionally some 120,068 persons have received both doses, which Anthony said approximates to 24.7% of the country’s adult population.
