Home News Misinformation on COVID vaccine still prevalent among a “large group” – Dr...
Months after the launch of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign locally, misinformation is still a significant hurdle for health authorities in their quest to reach herd immunity.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony said that quite a significant number of people are still using this misinformation to guide their decision not to get immunised.
“We’re fighting a lot of misinformation that was peddled pertaining to vaccines and unfortunately, there is quite a large group of people who believe this misinformation. Combating something that has been imbedded in people’s psyche is quite a difficult task. We have to try to get them to understand the importance of this,” he underscored.
Regions Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), Eight (Potaro-Siparuni) and 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) have seen low vaccine uptake, to which Dr Anthony pointed out that efforts have been made to quash existing myths and raise the numbers.
“We’ve been working on many fronts in these three regions, in all the regions for that matter. I’m hoping that if more community leaders, religious leaders, persons of influence talk to persons…. this sphere of influence to get vaccinated, then more people would be vaccinated.”
Speaking on preparation for a surge with the circulation of the Omicron variant, the Health Minister informed that there is capacity at the facilities. However, the primary goal is to protect the population through vaccination.
“It depends on how many cases we’re talking about. We certainly have made provision for additional cases. We have looked at bed capacity, oxygen capacity, ventilators and so forth. At this point, we have adequate facilities in those regions and if we need surplus spaces, persons can be brough to Ocean View Hospital, where we have 195 beds. We would prefer if we vaccinate and keep people safe, rather than them getting hospitalised and have to go through all these other treatments.”
In the vaccination campaign, over 764,000 doses have been administered. This number represents some 440,000 first doses and 314,000 second doses. Booster doses account for over 10,400. For the 12 to 17 age cohort, vaccine uptake stands at 30,198 first doses or 41.4 per cent with 21,503 second doses or 29.5 per cent.
Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) has achieved 100 per cent first dose coverage for children. There are some regions where that figure is extremely low, such as Regions Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) and 10 .
Vaccines used in the campaign include Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sputnik V and Sinopharm. Persons are encouraged to take their booster shots as well.
A person immunised with Sputnik V can take the Johnson and Johnson vaccine as their booster dose. Meanwhile, those who took Pfizer and Sinopharm jabs are required to take the same vaccines respectively. For the AstraZeneca-immunised subset, a recommended Pfizer shot can also be taken. These shots are to be taken six months after the first dose.
Persons completely immunised with Johnson and Johnson vaccines can get the same vaccine as a booster dose two months after. (G12)
