People aged 60 and over next under COVID-19 vaccination
The Minister for Health, Frank Anthony.
Kaieteur News – During a COVID-19 update on Tuesday, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony, whose government will target elderly people, aged 60 or over, next in its COVID-19 immunization campaign.
Dr. Anthony stated that the immunization campaign was being rolled out at various stages. The first step is to vaccinate frontline health workers. To date, Guyana has received 3,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, of which 2,800 have been allocated to frontline healthcare workers.
The Health Minister said that with that allocation, vaccination of frontline health workers would have been initiated in all 10 administrative regions and with the recent delivery of the 20,000 doses of Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines, the government hopes to cover as many people with frontline health as possible.
The second step, he said, will be vaccinating the elderly. The Ministry of Health will cooperate with the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security to do this. Dr. Anthony that elderly people would be targeted for vaccination through the Ministry of Human Services’ comprehensive database, which is used to distribute pension throughout Guyana. He further stated that the vaccination campaign would extend to elderly homes / geriatric facilities. Elderly people with a bed will not be excluded, as a special team will be sent to their homes to administer the vaccines.
In the third phase of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign people with “some sort of underlying illness” will receive the injection, according to Anthony. He explained that these diseases could be diabetes or hypertension, which is also found in younger people. “So if you are 40 and have diabetes then you become eligible, so that age has not broken off,” assured Minister Anthony.
“The criteria there is that you are at risk because of the underlying illness. So we’ll be able to do a lot of other people in that category. Once we have completed that, then we will go to other people in the population, ”he also said.
The Health Minister said that as more vaccines became available, the age range for vaccine dispensing would be reduced.
Dr. Anthony also addressed concerns about when cabinet members would receive their vaccines, stating “… His Excellency the President would decide when the government, the cabinet, would take the vaccine but our priority, right now, is to ensure that those categories that I have mentioned, that they get the vaccine. ”
He said that as the cabinet is a smaller group of people, a large number of vaccines will not be needed, but that is a consideration that will be made once the health workers have received their vaccines.