Govt remains prepared despite waning public interest in COVID-19 vaccines – Health Minister

…quantity of expired vaccines discarded in 2023

Interest from the population to get immunised against COVID-19 has dropped during 2023, despite new strains of the virus circulating globally and an uptick in cases.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony disclosed during a press conference on Friday that many people do not feel at risk anymore, and as such, vaccination numbers are low.
It has been three years since the virus was first detected, and over time, some sense of normalcy has returned. However, attention was drawn to the JN.1 virus, which has been circulating in some countries and contributing to rising cases.
The Health Minister disclosed, “Unfortunately, I think people don’t feel that they’re at risk anymore. We have seen over the last year, not many people coming for vaccination. While vaccines are available as boosters, people are not coming to take them. You have the current strain that is circulating now, JN.1 and we have seen in some countries, it’s caused an uptick in numbers.”

Over the year, the Health Ministry would have discarded a number of expired vaccines but Moderna and Pfizer doses remain available to the population.
Dr Anthony reasoned, “When more vaccines became available, a lot of people didn’t want the Sputnik vaccine. We can’t do anything about that. We had vaccines available but if people don’t want it, we can’t force them to take it. So, we had a quantity of vaccines that expired.”

Alert and prepared
It was added that the Health Ministry is alert and prepared at full capacity with adequate vaccines and testing kits.
“COVID is still out there and it’s mutating and so forth. We have to still monitor and be alert. We have full capacity to be able to test. We have the testing kits and everything else. We have machines at the regional levels and PCRs.”
The JN.1 strain is a sub-variant of Omicron and is more transmissible compared to the previous strains. Experts have indicated that it spreads at a faster rate than the other Omicron variants but does not cause more severe disease.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), COVID-19 still remains a serious public health threat, especially for people at higher risk of severe disease, such as older adults, infants, and people with certain disabilities and underlying health conditions.
One of the recommendations is to get vaccinated with COVID-19 shots and updated booster doses.
It added, “The continued growth of JN.1 suggests that it is either more transmissible or better at evading our immune systems. At this time, there is no evidence that JN.1 presents an increased risk to public health relative to other currently circulating variants.”