One hundred and fifty-three children were inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine during the Ministry of Health’s exercise for children, ages 5 to 11 on Saturday.
The number of vaccinated children was revealed by the Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, in his daily COVID update yesterday. He also disclosed that 51 adults were also vaccinated during the exercise. “… We were able to vaccinate 153 children between the ages of 5 and 11, we also did other vaccinations because the parents who accompanied the children, some of them got booster doses and so we did another 51 doses in addition to the specific age group of 5 to 11,” the Minister said.
With 25,000 children eligible to benefit from the vaccines donated by the government of Spain, the ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education said that as of this week, children in Regions 2, 3, 5 and 6 are expected to be vaccinated subject to permission from their parents.
“…We have a kind [of a] joint committee between the two ministries and the Ministry of Education would have sent out consent forms to the parents and they have been able to collect a lot of those responses. So, as of this week, we will be in Regions 2, 3, 5 and 6… we have also allocated vaccines to these regions and these [vaccines] have been sent up and are in the regions ready to be used”, he said.
Anthony also noted that the schools with the highest number of permissions from parents will be considered the top priority. A second jab of the vaccine for children is scheduled to commence in July. The vaccination drive thru, along with a walk in was held on the tarmac of the National Culture Centre. It was the first exercise that the ministry held for children, ages 5 to 11, to be vaccinated. Anthony had said that the vaccines will be administered on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.
