Government awaiting arrival of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines

– shipment to arrive soon

– Min. Anthony

The Ministry of Health continues to receive positive feedback from frontline workers who took their first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine last week, even as Guyana prepares to receive a donation of vaccines from the Chinese Government.

During Tuesday’s COVID-19 update, Minister Hon. Dr. Frank Anthony said this batch of 3000 doses, gifted to Guyana by the Government of Barbados, is nearly exhausted.  

He said the Government is looking forward to the arrival of the 20,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccines donated by the Chinese Government.

“We are expecting some vaccines as you know, Sinopharm, which is a donation from the Chinese Government so, those arrangements we are currently trying to tie up. We’re also working with a bilateral donation, and again trying to tie up the arrangements for that one as well. But our timeframe, it looks like the end of the month, and we should be getting in quite a substantial amount of vaccines,” Minister Anthony said.

He said now that the AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved by the World Health Organization for emergency use, the COVAX mechanism should begin distributions soon.

“We are expecting to start receiving vaccines from COVAX and they had promised to give us for 20 per cent of our population so those vaccines, hopefully, will start to come into Guyana very soon.”

Minister Anthony said he was pleased that the Government was able to acquire the first batch of vaccines for frontline workers. Also, in addition to the 104,000 doses Guyana expects to receive through the COVAX mechanism, some 149,000 doses are being sourced through a purchase agreement for CARICOM countries under a CARICOM-African Union pact.

Additionally, Government, in its recent budget, has proposed the sum of $750 million to support the rolling out of COVID-19 vaccines for the year, starting this month.