Vaccination of children 5 to 11 to commence on Saturday

…as Guyana receives 52,800 paediatric COVID vaccines from Spain

Immunisation of children between the ages of five to 11 will commence on Saturday, following the arrival of 52,800 doses of COVID paediatric vaccine from the Government of Spain.
Receiving the vaccines at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport on Monday were Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony and Education Minister Priya Manickchand.

Dr Anthony underscored that from the 65,000 and counting persons that contracted the virus, about one-third were children. As such, children are at risk if they do not take the COVID shots. For this to happen, parents need to give consent.
“Once we see that the uptake is good, then we will work with other partners to make sure that we can get more vaccines into the country. We have started some discussions to get more vaccines. But we would like to see people coming to get vaccinated.”
He added, “We cannot go and vaccinate a child without parental permission. When we start the vaccination process on Saturday at the tarmac of the [National] Cultural Centre, one of the things we would like is for parents to bring their children and give permission so that we can do the vaccination.”
He further stated that the Government has been actively trying to ensure coverage across the country, in order to achieve the targets, set out by the World Health Organisation.
“One of the best ways of reducing COVID in Guyana is to make sure that we get people vaccinated. The WHO has set certain targets in terms of vaccination and we are working to achieve those targets,” Dr Anthony stated.
Meanwhile, the Education Minister outlined that from statistics, vaccines have proven to slow the spread of COVID. While Guyana struggled initially to get the jabs, she pointed out that cases and deaths dropped significantly when they were finally introduced.
“Just looking on at the data, it says to us very clearly that vaccines work to prevent spread and serious illnesses. Unfortunately, countries like ours had to struggle and fight and depend on the graciousness of our friends in the world and allies to get vaccines in the country.”
According to Manickchand, vaccines will remain voluntary but parents should look at the data before making a decision, on whether their child to get immunised against COVID or not.
“To all the parents, vaccines will continue to be voluntary and we are not insisting that anyone takes the vaccine but we’re encouraging you strongly to pay attention to the data. One is less likely to get severely ill if they are inoculated against this disease.”
Spain said these efforts are in line with its staunch advocacy for fair, equitable, and universal access to COVID-19 vaccines. This donation is in addition to the 28,800 doses donated in February of this year by Johnson & Johnson through the COVAX mechanism.
These figures place Spain as one of the largest vaccine donors in the country and the second-largest on the continent.
“Spain is fully committed to efforts to achieve the highest possible immunisation and to facilitate access to vaccines for all countries and age groups. This donation is one more action of the “Team Europe” in Guyana formed by the EU and its Member States,” a statement shared.
Spain has already fulfilled the commitment made at the G-20 Summit in Rome to donate more than 50 million vaccines in the first quarter of 2022, as it has donated more than 55 million. Of these, 30 million have been allocated to African countries and more than 20 million to Latin America and the Caribbean. Subsequently, the President announced that Spain would donate an additional 20 million vaccines, increasing the total committed by the country to 70 million doses.
In a statement, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Spain, Baltasar Fernández relayed, “Our donation effort has to be viewed in the framework of a renewed effort to prop up the multilateral institutions dealing with health. Spain has made COVAX the keystone of our donation exercise and is working with our European Union partners under the “Team Europe” effort that aims to provide 700M vaccines to partners. Spain is also undergoing other efforts to combat the pandemic: we have financed both the development and patent-free manufacturing of a COVID-19 serologic test and new vaccines. We are also proud to finance a CARPHA project that includes providing the reference microbiology laboratory at UWI with the necessary inputs to identify the full sequence of the genome.”