Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Frank Anthony says Guyana will have its first three per cent of a COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX facility, in March. The remaining 17 per cent will come at a later date.
During Tuesday’s COVID-19 update, Minister Anthony revealed that the World Health Organization (WHO) is preparing to convene an executive board meeting to discuss new developments with respect to the availability of vaccines.
“Our main discussions on vaccine have been centred on working with COVAX and we continue to do that. We’ve had some good news from COVAX during this week, there’s an executive board meeting with the World Health Organization, which we are participating in … COVAX have reported that they now put deals in place to acquire two billion doses of vaccines and they are working to get these vaccines out by the second quarter of this year,” Minister Anthony said.
He explained that rolling out the vaccines would depend on getting regulatory approval for them.
“Once they get that and it’s deemed to be safe by the WHO, they will be able to roll that out. We understand they have a basket of various vaccines.”
The WHO has approved the Pfizer vaccine, among others, for emergency use. The Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines are still under consideration.
“Maybe in the next two months or so they probably will be granted emergency use listing, but we are waiting for that to happen.”
COVAX is a Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) formed by the WHO. It’s aims to accelerate development and the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.