Government will this week begin the administration of COVID-19 vaccines for children in the 5 to 11 age group, Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony announced on Friday.
In his COVID-19 update, Anthony said that there would only be enough vaccines for 25,000 children in the age group and as a result of the limited supply they would be administered on a “first come, first served” basis.
The vaccines are expected to arrive in Guyana on Monday and Anthony said the start of the vaccination exercise would begin across the country in the latter part of the week.
“These are special formulations. This is not the regular vaccines that we’ve been giving. This would be a special vaccine made by Pfizer specially for this age category and therefore I would urge parents with children within this age category, of 5 to 11, to bring their children out to make sure they are vaccinated,” he said.
“We have a limited supply, so it would be on a first come, first served basis when we start rolling this out,” he added.
The vaccines will be available at the regular vaccination sites but Anthony added that drive-through locations would likely also be planned.
He added that written permission for the administration of the vaccines would be required from parents.
On this point he noted that the need for parental permission has been identified as a “difficulty” in getting children in the 12 to 17 age group vaccinated as uptake has been low.
He noted that 34,726 first doses, representing coverage of 47.6% of the 12 to 17 age group, have been administered, and 25,451 second doses, representing coverage of 34.9 of the age group.
Anthony once again highlighted the need for the cooperation of parents and reminded that with the suspected circulation of a more infectious variant of the virus, it is better to be vaccinated in order to protect against long COVID and severe effects of the disease. “We have vaccines but are not seeing people coming forward to get vaccines,” he lamented.
Anthony also reminded that as of last Wednesday booster doses are now available for children in the 12 to 17 age cohort, while second booster doses are available for the general population.
Masking
Meanwhile, with the recent resurgence of new infections, Anthony reminded that masking remains very effective at slowing down the spread of the virus and he decried the complacency he has observed among the general population. He noted that while a lot of people have stopped wearing masks, there has been an increase in the number of new infections. “The increase that we have seen so far might be an underestimation because a lot of people who would have had the symptoms of COVID would not have recognised them as COVID symptoms because they are generally upper respiratory tract infections symptoms – meaning you can have a runny nose, congested nose, soar throat, that sort of thing, a little bit of fever,” he noted, before adding that similar symptoms present in persons infected with the flu and as a result persons would not realise that they have contracted COVID-19.
“It is something I think people need to think about,” he adding, while warning that unless persons continue to get tested for the virus, hospitalisations and deaths would continue.
He also said that those who have been hospitalised are largely persons who are older, or who have underlying conditions, and are either unvaccinated or have not completed their vaccine regimens.
