Vaccination uptake in older people could lessen hospitalisations, deaths

Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony is urging persons 60 years and older, to take the Covid-19 vaccine, as this could significantly decrease the number of hospitalisations and deaths among that population.  

The minister, during the covid-19 update on Friday, said this age category is at a higher risk of the disease.

“We have been able to get 77.5 per cent of that population to get their first dose vaccines and for second dose that population has had 63.5 percent. So, what we need to do is bring both of these numbers up, closer to about 85 percent, and if we are able to do that, we will start seeing the death rates, hospitalisation rates in this age category would drop significantly,” Dr. Anthony said.

For the 40-59 age group, 74.7 per cent of that population took the first dose while 52.8 per cent took the second dose, while for the 18-39 age group saw 69.9 per cent taking the first dose while only 3]b9.1 took the second dose.

“So here we start seeing the group of people who are not coming back for their second dose, so older people, generally have taken both doses, but with the younger population, most of them, they just did a first dose, but they didn’t take the second dose, and if you don’t get both doses then you won’t get the benefits of the vaccine,” Dr. Anthony noted.

Vaccination numbers reflect that thus far 381, 013 persons or 74.3 per cent of the adult population received a first dose while 242,327 persons or 47.2 per cent took a second dose.

This disparity also exists in the adolescent population with 27,276 persons or 37.4 per cent taking the first dose while 18,050 persons or 24.8 percent of that age group took the second dose.

The minister is hoping to increase the vaccination rate among all age groups to more than 80 percent.

Currently, approximately 139,000 persons are yet to take their second dose of a vaccine.

While vaccination numbers need to increase in the general population, the minister noted that some regions, like Regions 10 and Eight, have seen less vaccination uptake than others, and there are several factors that contribute to this.

“We have on the ground in Region 10 between 10 to 20 different sites that are operating every day to do vaccination, unfortunately at some of these sites, we probably get about two or three persons coming in any given day, in some cases no person would turn up in some of the different sites, so we are expending a lot of resources, but the return, if people don’t come, we are not getting the kinds of returns that we would expect,”

We have to continue working, because if we don’t, many other areas in Guyana would get closer to herd immunity and then within our country we will have places that would be endemic for covid because it would be higher risk if you travel to those areas, you can get covid, so that’s something that we will have to watch and we have to keep encouraging the leadership in these areas to ensure that they get vaccinated,” the health minister noted.

Dr. Anthony said part of the funds from USAID, will be used to increase educational coverage pertaining to vaccine.