Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be used in hinterland communities – Min. Anthony

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, MP, said the ‘single dose’ Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be given to persons mainly in the hinterland regions.

He made this statement during his COVID-19 update on Tuesday.

“So, we are going to send those vaccines out to those hard-to-reach communities across the hinterland. And I think that’s going to help us to reach a lot of people, to be able to expand the coverage,” he said.

Minister Anthony noted that there have been discussions pertaining to a second dose. However, for now it remains a single dose vaccine. He said the vaccine will mostly be for remote communities, since there has been difficulty reaching those areas.

“And one of the challenges has been when we gave a first dose in one of these remote communities, getting back into the community, finding the people because sometimes people move, it is a challenge.

“So, by giving this single dose vaccine at least we know people would… be protected. So, our strategy would be to use the J&J vaccine mostly for those, those remote communities that we’ll have difficulty accessing.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony said the vaccine’s effectiveness depends on the variant, “the efficacy varies, depending of what variant we are dealing with…we will have to wait studies against maybe the Delta variant to see what the accuracy would be.”

He added that the vaccine is easy to store and therefore “makes it much easier to work with”.  

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be given in limited amounts to coastal areas.

Guyana received its first batch of the Johnson & Jonson vaccine on Monday through an initiative spearheaded by the CARICOM Secretariat.