Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony on Wednesday disclosed that there has been minimal spoilage of COVID-19 vaccines in Guyana even as he mentioned that there are enough shots to give second doses to those still to be fully vaccinated.
During a brief interview with Stabroek News following an event on Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Anthony stated that authorities here are trying to manage the vaccines well in order to prevent spoilage or expiration.
This newspaper inquired whether authorities have had any issue with the spoilage or expirations of vaccines here given the number of vaccines that have brought into the country.
As detailed in a November 10 Stabroek News report, approximately 1,087,606 vaccine doses were acquired up to that time.
The issue of expiration was also highlighted in other countries, like Nigeria, where a Reuters said up to one million vaccines are estimated to have expired last month in the country without being used. That report noted that doses were delivered to the country within weeks of its expiry and were not used in time.
On this point, Anthony noted, “In fact a number of countries have offered us vaccines and if it has very short dates we are not taking it because you know it’s a challenge to get it out now.” He added that based on the number of persons vaccinated already and the rates at which persons are coming forward to be inoculated, authorities here are being very careful with how much vaccines are accepted.
It was then that he mentioned that there are already enough vaccines in the country to provide second doses to those persons who have received their first dose already as well as for the ongoing booster programme.
“So, we’re constantly monitoring it and constantly trying to see what we will need to order and so forth… I think the guys who have been managing this, they have been looking at staggering shipments and all of that so, so far we’ve been pretty good,” Anthony added.
When asked about the issue of AstraZeneca vaccines that he mentioned were about to expire at the end of November, he noted that those were very few. The amount that expired became few, he said, as they used that set which was at the time being saved as second doses as first doses for persons who were desirous of receiving the vaccine.
“To make sure that we don’t have any spoilage we open up, we give some more first dose and so we were able to make sure that all the vaccines that we had on hand that we used them up.” This was not mentioned previously.
To be able to offset the additional number of persons that require a second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the health minister stated that they are expecting a tranche of those vaccines this month.
