Health Ministry to use first batch of COVID vaccines to ensure widest coverage

-incoming supplies to be used for booster shots

With close to 1,900 frontline workers already receiving their first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony yesterday revealed that authorities will exhaust the first batch of vaccines that were recently received to cover as many persons as they can instead of administering the second doses from the same supply.

Anthony made the announcements during yesterday’s COVID-19 update in which he stated that as of Monday some 1,852 persons had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines from the initial tranche of 3,000 AstraZeneca shots that Guyana received from Barbados in late January.

The minister indicated that as the country expects more AstraZeneca vaccines and along with the lengthy interval between the administration of the first and second dose, authorities have decided to not keep 1,500 doses from the first batch for the booster shot.

“As of today, we have given out 1,852 vaccines to different persons and we have done so in all regions excepting Eight and Nine. But we have a team that is going into those communities during this week,” Anthony said, while adding that this will then ensure coverage over all regions of the country for those workers who are working directly with COVID-19 patients.

He further noted that they will ensure that those working directly with COVID-19 patients are given priority while noting a recently reported “leakage” where someone who is not a frontline worker received the vaccine. “That is a total breach of the protocols because the first set of people we want to get vaccines [to] are those who are most at risk. So, therefore, we have to investigate and see why this breach occurred and to make sure that we correct it,” the minister noted.

As it relates to the procurement of vaccines, he stated that the government is working on a number of strategies to be able to get vaccines into the country and that within another week, more vaccines should be arriving.

With the recent approval of the AstraZeneca vaccines by the World Health Organization (WHO), he said that Guyana should be receiving vaccines from the COVAX facility shortly and that as Guyana gets closer to closing discussions and arrangements with other countries, Guyanese can expect more vaccines soon.

Guyana yesterday recorded its 190th COVID-19 fatality even as seven new cases of the virus were recorded.

The Ministry of Health said that the latest death was identified as a 63year-old man from Region Four.

Meanwhile, the Ministry’s dashboard showed that some seven new cases were recorded which increased the country’s total number of positive confirmed cases to 8,427. The new

cases came after some 633 more persons were tested, thus increasing the total number of persons tested so far to 60,727.

According to the regional distribu tion of COVID-19 cases, three new cases each were recorded in Regions Seven and Four while one new case was recorded in Region Three. As a result there are now 456 active cases, 41 of whom are in institutional isolation

while another 415 are in home isolation. Eight persons remain patients at the country’s COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit.

There are eight persons who are in institutional quarantine while some 41 more persons have recovered from the virus. The total number of recovered cases now stands at 7,774.