MoH to host COVID-19 vaccination drive at Providence Stadium on Saturday

The Health Ministry has brought innovation to its immunisation programme with a vaccination ‘drive-thru’, set for Saturday, May 22, 2021 at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence, East Bank Demerara (EBD), where the public can get vaccinated from their vehicles.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony on Thursday outlined that the idea was to improve accessibility for persons to get vaccinated against COVID-19. As such, he explained that the steps involved in getting the shots would be incorporated in a drive-thru setup.

“We thought that this is one way that we could make it more accessible, more convenient for people to come and get their vaccines. What we have in mind is that you can drive into the stadium with your car and once you get in, arrangements are in place where someone will approach the car, see how many occupants in there would need vaccination. They would do the paperwork for the vaccination and proceed to the next station. At that station, the paperwork is verified and they will do the actual jab,” the Minister underscored.
After taking the vaccine, the person would spend 15 minutes under observation, before they could leave. The Ministry is anticipating a great turnout, since many persons can be vaccinated within the day. Dr Anthony also added that there would be enough vaccinators and volunteers to ensure a smooth process, and both first and second doses would be administered at the site.
“Because of how it’s arranged, we think that we’ll get a lot more people coming out and it’s quite convenient. If four persons are coming in a vehicle, we can easily do four persons very quickly. We’ll have a number of volunteers; we’re expecting to get 40 people volunteering to assist us with the write-up and so forth. These are persons who would have worked with us before and did quite a good job.”
The site will be operational from 09:00h to 21:00h. This initiative materialised through collaboration with the Ministries of Culture, Youth and Sports; Home Affairs; and Public Works, along with other organisations.
“While it’s innovative and novel, I think it should get a lot of people vaccination once we have persons coming to do that…I think we’ll have everything in place, ready to go early Saturday morning, so that we can roll this out. We could be able to accommodate a lot of people once we get a steady flow of traffic coming through,” he assured.
If the pilot initiative is successful, authorities will replicate it in other areas. The Ministry has already announced that vaccination sites in Georgetown would remain open until 20:00h. There are about 100 sites, both fixed and mobile, where persons can turn up to get inoculated.
According to recent statistics, over 169,000 persons have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, representing 34.5 per cent of the adult population. Some 34,317 persons have returned for their second doses.