Guyana to receive 224,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines next week
– safeguarding nation’s health priority
– President Ali
His Excellency Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali says Guyana is set to receive 224,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines by next Tuesday.
The President made this announcement on Friday, on the side-lines of an event hosted at State House.
The Government would receive 24,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the WHO’s COVAX facility on Monday, and 200,000 does of the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia on Tuesday. The Government is also working to secure another 200,000 doses of the Sputnik V from Russia.
The supply of the first 200,000 does of the Sputnik V vaccine will cost Government $800 million at $4,000 per dose. President Ali said this would result in adjustments to the Budget, but emphasised that ensuring the nation’s health is priority.
“Right now, we are finalising the logistics to bring that 200,000 in. We have established a supply chain. We have established the storage facility. We had meetings with the private sector because we have to bring all the storage capacity together to get this done.
So, we will be able once the scheduling that is the 24,000 and the first set of the 200,000 coming in by Monday, Tuesday; we will be able to roll out early next week by Wednesday definitely, the 40 and above in a massive way,” the President said.
The Head of State said the goal is to have the Guyanese population fully inoculated.
“This is the utmost priority for me. Personally, I am taking this on as a task in ensuring that our population is vaccinated and that as quickly as possible, we can return our country to some level of normalcy and get out of this pandemic.”
To this end, the Government is rolling out a pre-vaccination process to have forms available in communities and online to reduce the time it takes for someone to get vaccinated.
“To do this, the Army medical brigade and medical students will be trained in the documentation aspect in fulling up and getting the data and they will be working with the NDCs, Toshaos, to start getting the documentation going. And they have started this since yesterday,” the President said.
However, President Ali made it clear that vaccination is not the solution that will bring an end to COVID-19, as people still need to obey the gazetted measures.
“This next four weeks is a very critical four weeks for us in ensuring that we stick to the guidelines while we push ahead with the vaccination. So, the Task Force will be working simultaneously with the vaccination programme to have strong enforcement, but we are sparing no effort and we are sparing no resource in getting the vaccines here,” he said.
The President said discussions are ongoing with the Governments of Russia and Qatar to secure additional doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
To date, Guyana has received 3,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Barbados and 80,000 from India. The Government of the People’s Republic of China also donated 20,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine. Guyana is also looking to secure another 149,000 doses of vaccines through a purchase agreement under a CARICOM-African Union pact. Added to that, another 200,000 doses of the Sputnik vaccines from Russia are being procured.