With the World Health Organisation (WHO) approving the reformulation of the US-made Pfizer vaccine for children five to 11 years old, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, M.P. said the ministry will be training healthcare workers to administer the vaccine to this population.
He said as soon as Guyana receives vaccines for the age cohort, training will be provided to healthcare workers “to make sure they understand the dosing, the mixing and finally how to administer it and then post vaccination, how to observe.”
During his daily COVID-19 update, Monday, Dr. Anthony said countries will now be more confident in administering the COVID-19 vaccine to the younger age group.
“It’s good that we’re now seeing that the WHO has decided to go this route. What this would allow is for countries who are interested in giving this vaccine to the children within this age group 11 to 5, will now be able to do it with more confidence,” he said.
Meanwhile, in an effort to provide adequate vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, the WHO and the Pfizer Inc. have developed labs to enable the manufacturing of the Pfizer vaccine in other parts of the World.
“The WHO along with Pfizer company would have developed and sent a mini lab to the African Union in this particular instance to South Africa, where they would now be able to manufacture the Pfizer vaccine in South Africa…
I think similar initiatives are on the way in other areas of the world and so we’ll see more capacity being built to be able to manufacture these vaccines over the next year or so,” Dr. Anthony said.
As of Tuesday, 423, 024 or 84.2 per cent of the adult population took the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine while 327, 775 or 63.9 percent is now fully vaccinated.
In terms of the 12 to 17 age group, 33, 529 or 46 percent took the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 24, 202 or 33.2 percent took both doses.