Some 15,000 second doses of the Sputnik V vaccine have arrived in Guyana for the month of July allowing the Ministry of Health (MoH) to continue with its inoculation drive.
This development was announced by the Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony during his daily COVID-19 update where he stated that more vaccines are expected to arrive in the country on a regular basis in the coming months. The Sputnik V first and second vaccines are different.
Guyana has been using the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine which has been described previously as the backbone of the country’s inoculation programme. Anthony disclosed yetserday that earlier this week some 10,000 second doses had arrived in the country.
As a result the MoH was able to restart the administration of those vaccines on Tuesday after running out of second doses. “This week we had about 10,000 doses that came in and we’re expecting to get these allocations coming on a regular basis,” Anthony assured.
The minister also revealed that earlier in the month, the tranche of Sputnik V second doses that arrived, amounted to 5,000 doses. In late June, it was reported that Guyana at that time had received a total of 305,537 Sputnik V shots with 244,268 accounting for first doses and 61,268 accounting for second dose components resulting in an outstanding amount of 183,000 second shots. This additional 15,000 doses that were received this month means that the country has so far received a total of 76,268 second dose components with some 168,000 outstanding to be able to match the amount of first doses received.
Anthony noted that vaccines will continuously come in until the shortfall is made up. Meanwhile he noted that as of Tuesday a total of 248,970 persons have received their first dose of a vaccine accounting for 51.1% of the adult population. And 133,987 persons have received both doses and can now be considered fully immunized.
