As of yesterday, 16,768 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were administered to adolescents. This represents 23% of the 12 to 18-year-old population, which comprises about 72,000 persons including schoolchildren and out-of-school youth, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony revealed during his COVID-19 update today.
When the vaccination campaign was launched last month, teams went into various regions to administer jabs and to train health officials there to dispense the vaccine, which the Guyana Standard understands, differs from the regular vaccines being administered to adults.
The Minister said that vaccination teams in regions, except Eight and Seven, have already been trained. More work is yet to be done in the two other regions.
Meanwhile, the Minister lamented the increase in new infections.
He opined that the surge is being brought on by ‘complacency’. The Minister added that with the Delta variant in Guyana, the country will continue to record more cases.
“If people are not wearing their masks properly, if they’re not distancing, they’re not sanitizing, they’re gathering in groups and being very irresponsible, then we are going to see surges of cases. Right now, for example, within the last 24 hours, we’ve has another 240 new cases. So, that’s going to take our active cases up to 2,709…Again, if people are not taking the precautions, we’re going to see this go up even further,” he said.
