The Ministry of Health expects to procure the necessary equipment to print digital COVID-19 vaccination cards in the first quarter of this year, Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony disclosed recently.
Anthony said that works are still underway for the digitising of COVID-19 vaccination records in Guyana. The health authorities had signalled their intentions to have all COVID-19 vaccination records digitised since July of 2021 in a bid to make forgery harder. When Stabroek News asked about the progress, Anthony stated that a special team in the ministry is working on the digitisation.
“We have got most of the physical registers and we are now putting that in a digital format, a lot of the work has already been completed,” he said. Anthony had said in 2021 that the government was working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to procure the necessary equipment to produce the new vaccination cards. He now expects the equipment to be delivered early this year. Anthony said, “…The computers, the specialized printers and so forth… we expect that we would get delivery of those special equipment to print the new cards within the first quarter of this year.”
The minister stated that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) should have been signed last year for authorities here to be able to access software designed to keep track of COVID-19 vaccination data. The use of this software was expected to push the local authorities to create new vaccination cards which would be harder to forge, as there have been instances of persons forging existing COVID-19 paper vaccination cards. It is unclear how much of these forgeries are in circulation.
