Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony yesterday stated that from preliminary information received, parents are happy to have the COVID-19 vaccine for their children.
This was stated during the Minister’s daily COVID-19 update, where he disclosed that the ministry has been working to procure vaccines to cover children between ages 12 and 18 and that those vaccines will be in the country soon. Upon their arrival, the authorities will be working to roll out those vaccines especially to schoolchildren.
“We have been working really hard to get Pfizer’s vaccine here and once those vaccines come in, our intention is to administer it to children between the ages of 12-18,” he underlined, adding that the vaccine has been proven to be very safe and effective for children in that age category.
This vaccine, he said, has already been used in the United States to inoculate children and no significant issues have yet been observed.
Further, he noted that since the announcement of the procurement of vaccines for children, the education ministry has been circulating letters to parents in order to have their consent for their children to be vaccinated.
Anthony indicated, “In that letter parents would have to give consent so if they agree, then they really don’t have to do anything, but if they disagree then they would fill the form, send it back to the school saying that they don’t want their child given the vaccine and then the ministry would have to respect those wishes.”
He mentioned that so far, from discussions he had had with the education minister, a lot of schools have sent those letters out to parents and they have been coming back with positive responses. As a result, they are now working to ascertain how many children in each school will be getting the vaccine as well as other information in advance so that health teams, when sent out, will have sufficient shots for each child who would be present for inoculation.
“So far from the preliminary information we have received I think a lot of people, a lot of parents, are excited to get the vaccine for their child because they recognise that without this vaccine it’s going to be extremely difficult to reopen schools,” the health minister said during the update.
He added that over the last year students have been out of school with teachers not being able to properly teach, while opining that many parents understand the importance of getting their children back to school.
When asked how students who are not vaccinated would be handled, he said that it would be difficult for that child to attend school physically as every other person would be inoculated so therefore the Ministry of Education will have to work out what protocol would be put in place to address that issue.
“There is a law in Guyana that provides for children to be vaccinated and if you’re not vaccinated then you can be denied entry into schools so we do have a law like that and hopefully we don’t have to use it,” the minister stated.
