Sputnik V vaccine arrives

Guyana’s COVID-19 immunisation campaign has been boosted with the arrival of 25,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia.

The vaccines arrived on Friday at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport onboard a charter flight. In an invited comment, Minister of Health, Hon. Dr Frank Anthony said it was the first batch of vaccines to arrive out of the 200,000 doses the Government purchased. These, he said, will be used as early as next week.

The Health Minister told DPI that arrangements are already being made to have another batch shipped shortly.

“This vaccine is a two-dose vaccine as well and we’ll have an interval of three weeks between first and second dose so the 25,000 that came in are all the first dose so we’ve made arrangements as well to start getting the second dose.”

The Sputnik V is the first registered COVID-19 vaccine and is recommended for persons 18 years and older.

The Health Minister also urged the public to get vaccinated as it is a step towards herd immunity. Last week, the Ministry commenced the immunisation of persons 40 years and older. To date, some 40,000 persons have received their COVID-19 vaccine.

“As we continue to roll out this process, we’ll get more and more people on board with their vaccinations. So, it is important for people to get their vaccines because these vaccines would obviously prevent people from getting sick with COVID.” 

Additionally, the Government is still exploring other avenues to procure more vaccines.

“We have various options. Right now, a part from the Sputnik V that we have bought, we have additional vaccines that we’re expecting to get from COVAX and we are constantly exploring new avenues to make sure that we have enough vaccines to immunise our adult population,” Minister Anthony stated. Guyana has also received 127,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Barbados, China, India and the COVAX Facility.