Adolescents’ COVID-19 vaccination campaign reaches Regions Six, Nine
– 6,020 receive first dose Pfizer vaccine
One week after the launch of the aCOVID-19 vaccination campaign for adolescents at the St. Stanislaus College in Georgetown, Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, MP, said the campaign has now been extended to Regions Six and Nine.
In his COVID-19 update Friday, Dr. Anthony said so far, some 6,020 children between the ages 12 to 17 have received their first dose of the vaccine. Thursday’s vaccination in Region Three saw 1,658 doses being administered to children in communities there.
“The rollout has been pretty good. We started out in Region Four, we have moved into Region Three, we also did some vaccination yesterday in Region Nine and today we are going to be in Region Six.
“We are also at the same time training the staff within the region to be able to administer these vaccines. So, the first two weeks, it’s both doing vaccination and it’s a learning process for the staff within the region, because we have some stuff that went up centrally to train, and as well as supervise the vaccination.”
The training, Minister Anthony noted, would ensure there is no delay in the administration of the Pfizer vaccine when the mobile team moves on to other communities across regions.
“A lot of the staff who have now been trained would be able to roll out that independently. So, we will see much more uptake, as the weeks go by. Right now, we’ve had 6,020 children who would have received their first dose of US vaccine. And yesterday alone, in Region Three, and some that we started in Region Nine, we would have completed just for yesterday, 1,658 doses.”
Minister Anthony said many parents have been taking their children out to be vaccinated. He said he would like to see this trend continue and encouraged other parents to do the same, so that children could return to school safely.
After the first dose, the children would receive their booster dose, 21 days after. Meanwhile, for the adult population, as of Thursday evening, some 318,569 or 62.1 per cent of that age group took the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 166,763 persons or 32.5 per cent of the population are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.