Third set of Russian vaccine to arrive this week

−over 63,000 people inoculated to date

Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Frank Anthony says Guyana will receive a third consignment of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine this week.

Minister Anthony made this disclosure during Tuesday’s COVID-19 update.

“Later in the week we are expecting some additional vaccines. These vaccines are very important for us to roll out to immunise our population, and that is why we are paying so much attention to making sure that we get vaccines into Guyana.”

Minister Anthony said the vaccination programme has been going very well.

“So far, 63,740 persons have received their first dose and as of yesterday, we had about 3,455 persons who received their vaccines. We are obviously going to scale this up, as our staff become more proficient in the use of these vaccines,” he said.

The Minister said additional cold storage has also been made available to store the vaccines.

“We have built capacity in Region Four, Region Six that will take care of six and five. We have built capacity in Region 10. We are in the process of completing some additional capacities in Region Two, so they will have adequate cold storage.

Dr. Anthony also noted that once those additional vaccines arrive, the Government would be scaling up its COVID-19 immunisation programme.  

On Monday, Guyana received the second batch of 30,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine procured from Russia.  The first quota of 25,000 doses arrived on April 2. These quotas are from a total 200,000 doses that the Government has purchased from Russia.

Altogether, Guyana has to date received 182,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines: 3,000 from the Government of Barbados, 80,000 from the Government of India, 20,000 from the People’s Republic of China and 24,000 through the COVAX mechanism.